Shin Mouretsu Pirates
by Kuugen the Fox
Summary: The fall of an empire and the rise of its bloodthirsty successor. The creation of a federation to encompass reason within the galaxy. Once more, war embroils the galaxy. Old feuds are revived and practices long forgotten are remembered. After a hundred year peace, war returns in all of its ugliness and after a hundred years of charade, Pirates are true Pirates once more!
1. Chapter 1

Galactic Year 1672, March – Death of an Empire.

The news of the horrific accident that many believed to be a conspiracy or rebellion spread through the galaxy like wildfire, from the closest planets to the Galactic Empire's heart in the center of the galaxy all the way to the frontier, where outcasts and outlaws lived. The entire imperial family had perished together with over five billion million people after a hyper-core fusion reactor mysteriously overloaded and caused an explosion so devastating that it swept the surface of the planet clean.

At the time, Marika followed the news with great interest because although the government of the Sea of Morning Star was largely left to their own devices, they were part of the empire. The planet was devastated so badly that much of the bureaucratic structure of the empire collapsed under its own weight. Just over four months passed between the explosion and the aftermath that would take away the breath of every living soul in the galaxy.

Galactic Year, 1672, August – Civil War rises like a Phoenix from the Ashes

Misa had stormed into her private quarters that morning; although it was difficult to tell what time it was in space. Marika was already awake, a broken tea cup on the floor and her eyes glued to two videos running in parallel, broadcast over the emergency news channel. The _New Galactic Empire_ , formed by an illegitimate but direct descendent of the last Empress. The _Galactic Republic_ , created by 511 member worlds across the galaxy. Both of these forces rose from the ashes of the destroyed Galactic Empire and declared war on each other.

"Tell me, Misa… what's going to happen to the Sea of Morning Star now?" Marika was worried about the friends she still had there. She had graduated a year ago now, and the first years she had left behind were now just enjoying the summer vacation of their third year. But Marika's question went unanswered.

Galactic Year, 1673, January – War never changes

A conflict that Marika personally saw through, a conflict that was over a hundred years old now. This conflict reared its ugly head through the chaos. What had once been the Stellar Alliance and the Colony Federation banded back together. And with the remains of the Galactic Empire at each other's throat, the Stellar Alliance sought to take back the worlds they had lost to rebellion a century ago. What had become an enterprising business governed by laws, insurance and strict policy was now rolled back to what it had been at the time of inception.

Marika was twenty years old now and still her heart beat like she was racing towards a cliff in the dark. The _Letter of Marque_ that had enabled her to be a pirate until now was no longer a mere business license or an insignia of being a military force. Pirates were what they used to be now that war had broken out again. Marika felt many things that day; excitement, fear, uncertainty, anticipation and hesitation. She was now more than just a pirate in name. It was real now.

Galactic Year, 1673, March – The Sea of the Lightning Star Massacre

Met with opposition from the now sixteen member worlds in the Colony Federation, the Stellar Alliance resorted to an absolute taboo that drew even the ire of the radical New Galactic Empire Armada. Unable to secure safe landing for an invasion, the Stellar Alliance commenced orbital bombarding with battleships, devastating large parts of the planet and killing millions.

Marika was among those that appeared first on the scene to stop the Stellar Alliance from turning the colony into an uninhabitable wasteland. The Bentenmaru took heavy damage and so did Marika. For the first time in her life, there was no peaceful solution. Every moment of hesitation would cause tens of thousands more people to die. Opening fire on Stellar Alliance ships really made the realization sink in that this was not entertainment for anyone. It was a real battle of life and death. Unlike her bout with Quartz Christie and the Grand Cross battleships, she was opening fire on manned ships. Even though she herself didn't press the button that fired the main cannon, she felt the weight of the people that died that day, by the hand of the Bentenmaru on her shoulders.

But she would not break under that burden.

Galactic Year 1673, August – Escalation

It came as a surprise to both the Federation and the Alliance when sides were picked by the remnants of the Galactic Empire. A war that had left their sector largely alone was now at their very door step. The New Galactic Empire demanded the Stellar Alliance swear allegiance to their rule or face extermination by their massive armada. The Galactic Republic coerced the Colony Federation into joining, threatening to remain impartial should the NGE threaten their lives after absorbing the Stellar Alliance once again.

For the pirates, this meant only one thing; the number of their targets had just multiplied exponentially. The Bentenmaru had lead through shining example, making them famous even among the Stellar Alliance. _What do we do if pirates attack us? W_ as a common question in the Stellar Alliance military. _Pray that it is the Bentenmaru_. Was the answer given most often.

After witnessing the countless deaths at the Sea of Lightning Star, Marika searched for ways to still follow her way as a pirate but also spare as many lives as possible. Thousands of Stellar Alliance soldiers were marooned in space by her, left with only three days worth of food and water and a functioning communicator. Their ship was stripped bare of anything valuable and so were the soldiers. But the one thing that counted most was most often not touched by the Bentenmaru; their lives itself.

Only those that were determined to fight to the death were met by Schnitzer and occasionally even Marika herself. Those injured were seen by Misa while the salvage of the military ship was progressing. The dead were frozen, so they could be given a burial on their home planet.

It was the Stellar Alliance military that first started putting pirates into one of two categories. With Kato Marika as the leading lady, many pirates followed her because of Quartz Christie and her other exploits, followed her example; they plundered, robbed, fought, stole and kidnapped but killed only in the most desperate of circumstances. These pirates, and Marika herself, became known as the _Kato_ _Rogues_. Those that did not adhere to the guidelines that Marika embodied on the other hand were merely pirates, although they were called _Black Pirates_ in some circles.

Between those two groups of pirates existed a rift of principle and morals. But they were still united in a sense. Pirates would not get in each other's way because in the end they still fought the same enemy.

And now, in this time, the Galactic Year 1673, October – A new voyage begins now.

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

The captain's room. Without turning on the lights, the twenty year old Kato Marika finally finished her day. The uniform that had changed a little over these last two years was sloppily hung over a chair that was right on the way between the door and her bed. Wearing but her underwear, Marika slipped under the warm covers without a word. It had been a long day and the night crew was taking over. _I hope Sasha doesn't get crumbs over the console again… Luca nearly lynched her the last time_. Fumbling about under the covers, Marika finally found what she was looking for. The one thing she couldn't go without.

"Finally coming to bed?" Words coming from someone that had already been lightly asleep for some time now – more than _light_ sleeping was never an option for pirates these days. The cover rustled and was moving back a little, revealing the long black hair of one vice-captain of the Bentenmaru. "What were you still doing? It's also a captain's duty to get rest whenever possible." Her nagging and sharp tongue hadn't changed at all.

"Sorry, Chiaki-chan." Marika held her hands in front of her stomach and parried a soft elbow blow from her girlfriend. "You were waiting for me, right?"

"Naturally." Turning over in bed and facing Marika, Chiaki swiped a strand of Marika's spiky hair from her forehead. "So? What kept you?"

"Show called and had information for us. There will be a secure cargo transport with four Corvette class Stellar Alliance ships as security. I had to decide if we are going to take part in that and it took some time to contact the other captains. The Viracocha and one more are going to join us." Marika's facial features relaxed and so did the captain. "But enough business stuff!" Throwing her arms around Chiaki, Marika casually kissed her. Not especially passionately or lustful, just a normal kiss that lasted a few seconds and left Chiaki with a minuscule, and thanks to the darkness also invisible, blush straight across her face. "I'm happy you came to the Bentenmaru."

"You tell me that ever night. It's been over a year. You don't have to keep telling me so I don't go back." Chiaki reached over Marika's torso and put just one arm around her, resting gently on her side. Touching her forehead against Marika's, she was almost desensitized to intimacy now. "And you make me think about my old man every time you tell me that. It's really awkward when we're in bed together."

"Sorry, sorry. I got so used to saying it, it's almost like saying Good Morning or Good Night." Marika moved her head around, giving her neck muscles a little bit if a workout. "Ah, today sucked… it makes me remember the days I spent studying like crazy to graduate. I'm all sore from not moving around enough."

Chiaki sighed a little. "Marika." It was the kind of tone she used when she was either annoyed or disappointed with her.

"Chiaki-chan?"

 _Don't call me that! I've been telling you for years!_ "If you want to have sex, just say so. I don't like having to guess whether something you say is a subtle euphemism or not." Saying _sex_ out loud was still embarrassing, although she would never have admitted that to Marika.

"Hm… I guess not tonight. I really hurt all over and if we stay up any longer we'll feel dead tomorrow." Kissing Chiaki on her forehead, Marika pulled back her shoulders and then stretched, her arms still around Chiaki. A quiet popping sound came from her shoulders and then her wrists. "Ow… Hey, Chiaki, I've been thinking that we should figure out a place that we can use as our base. It wasn't really necessary when we were just working with the insurance company, but now we're always running out of space and it is getting harder and harder to find safe haven, so-" Marika's lips were sealed soundly by the black haired girl who really had enough of business.

Once the kiss faded, Chiaki didn't move away far enough for them to not feel each other's breath on their faces. Remaining close, she sighed again, something she did a lot around Marika. "Who was it that said _Enough business_ just a few minutes ago?"

"Sorry, couldn't help it. I got a lot on my mind." Even though there was no way Chiaki could see it, Marika put on a big smile for her. "I would be dying from overwork without you."

 _Misa would lock you in your quarters before that happened._ "A base does sound very much like something pirates should have. Knowing you, you already have an idea of where and how and I'll listen; but not tonight."

Grabbing Chiaki by her waist and shoulder, Marika rolled backwards and pulled her girlfriend with her. While she was flat on her back, Chiaki was right on top of her. "I've gotten tough enough to do this now."

"Yes, yes, so you've demonstrated to me almost every night for the last month." Pinching Marika's hands in quick succession, Chiaki got off of her girlfriend and laid back down next to her. Marika turned with her, as if she had known this would happen. To make her lover a little happy, or more accurately comfort her, she moved her right foot just between Marika's shins and left her leg there. _I still don't understand what's so enjoyable about rubbing legs together. But if it makes her happy I can play along for a bit_. "Are you going to keep messing around or can we go to sleep? Although I am wide awake now, thanks to a certain rambunctious captain of mine."

Marika pouted a little being addressed like that. "Don't call me captain when we're alone. Marika. Girlfriend. Lover. _My Love_! Any of those are okay!"

Grabbing Marika's nose and twisted it a little to both sides, Chiaki made the pirate captain moan in mild annoyance. "Sleep."

"Okay, okay… you're still so strict." Finding Chiaki's hand in the dark was much easier for Marika than anyone would have thought. It was almost like there was a special magnetism between them that made it possible for their hands to always find each other with almost perfect precision.

They had barely been quiet and slowly drifting to sleep, playing with each other's fingers half still when half dozed off already, when their little excursion to the land of dreams was cut short. "Captain, come to the bridge immediately! We have a situation!"

The voice belonged not to Misa or Kane, who would usually call her. It was Yayoi Yoshitomi, who had handled the Bentenmaru's engines all the way back when the original crew had been sick and stuck in isolation. After graduating about a year ago, she had signed on with Marika. Since then, she had helped out San-Daime whenever possible and took his position during the night shift.

She was not the only one from Hakuoh Academy that had signed on with the Bentenmaru. Hoshimiya Ai had become somewhat like an attache to Kane, who was quite bothered by having a barely adult girl follow him around and observe him during missions. The rest of the crew was quite amused by it however.

With the prospect of having to stay in space for extended periods of time, Marika brought Harada Maki, who had once proven aboard the Bentenmaru that she was an excellent cook. Although there were sometimes complaints about there being too many vegetables, the crew was much more well nourished than ever before.

The last of the new arrivals was Sasha Staple, who had quite the talent for navigating. And much like her older counterpart, Sasha was a little strange. Luca would hardly talk to anyone on board the ship under normal circumstances; except Sasha. And Sasha would always blow off anyone if Luca called, almost as if they were secondary. Only Marika commanded respect from them.

Three of those four were manning the bridge when Marika and Chiaki dragged themselves in there, both wearing formal pirate outfits and trying to play off that they were really tired. In twenty-nine out of thirty nights, nothing happened that required the attention of the captain. But tonight was not such a day.

"Sasha, sit rep." Marika didn't have a lot of energy left and it was audible. Yayoi had been on board the longest out of those three but Sasha was the navigator and could be surprisingly concise. Her somewhat wild blonde hair and carefree look really betrayed that personality trait of hers.

"At 0240, an unknown object appeared out of thin air right in front of us." Sasha loved to use a weird time format that the military of an ancient civilization had once used.

"You mean it dropped out of FTL?" Chiaki went down to where Yayoi was and sat down by Hyakume's station. She could fill the place of any crew member, but she was very much a queen of all trades, master of none. In combat situations, between ships, she was only properly trained in handling weapon systems. And even then she generally assisted Schnitzer.

"No, it literally appeared. There was no touchdown signature and from what we can gather with optical, it doesn't even seem to have any propulsion system."

"An asteroid?" Marika hit a few buttons and optical came up on the screen, showing what was basically a big white cube that was clearly man-made. "What is that?"

"A ship." Chiaki was just getting results from a low range penetration scan – a relatively recent upgrade the Bentenmaru had gotten. Much like the name implied, it could partially scan the inside of ships. "It's dead though. No energy readings, no life signs. No explanation how it got here either. There is no heat signature or resident energy trail anywhere." This info came from a long range omni-directional particle scan. A type of scanning that focused exclusively on all types of energy. A cold ship would barely even shop up on it.

Marika scratched her cheek, took a deep breath and made a hard decision. "Wake up Schnitzer and Coorie. If that thing gives off any life sign, wake up Kane and Misa as well." There was no point in waking up everyone at this point. But just in case, she wanted the electronic warfare systems to be running and she wanted weapons to be aimed and primed.

But there was no life sign. Schnitzer arrived first. Coorie showed up a good minute later, wearing slippers, and looked like she might fall asleep at her station if nothing was going to happen. "Chiaki, has it been doing anything?"

"No. I ran every scan I know how to read and it just looks like a dead lump of metal. But there are definitely hallways and rooms inside. It's about forty to forty on forty meters, which isn't that big. It's perfectly square, too."

"Coorie, can you see if their systems are live?" Marika wanted to check if they couldn't find out information that way.

"Nope. If they have any computers on board of that thing at all, they're all powered off. Or dead." Coorie reached for an open pack of snacks and shoveled three hand fulls of small crackers into her mouth. "I'll keep an eye out for any sudden activations and what not."

"An unknown ship without any kind of visible propulsion system appears out of thin air, without any heat trail or FTL touchdown signature. All scans show that it is dormant or dead. Chiaki, are there any docking ports?"

"None that the scans picked up. It's possible that the hull is capable of shifting to create an opening, but I can't tell that much from scans."

"I have a bad feeling about this. Schnitzer. Wake up about ten of your people and have them prep for a space walk and bring one set of invasion gear. Ai, get us as close to that thing as you can. Chiaki, once we're close, fired anchors and see if they stick. Sasha, Coorie, Yayoi, keep an eye out on anything suspicious. I am going to see for myself what this is all about."

Chiaki was a pirate first and Marika's lover second, which was why she replied with _Aye, aye captain_ instead of getting out of her chair and asking Marika to be careful. And the second she was able to leave her post for a short while, she still didn't. Chasing after Marika like a puppy in love was not her way. To begin with, Marika had almost bullied her into admitting her feelings for her. The constant bedroom eyes, the not so subtle innuendo and comments – it was a living hell to keep on pretending she wasn't in love with Marika. And when even Luca told her to suck it up and just spit it out already – that had been the last straw. There were no regrets though.

The anchors launched and hit the unknown vessel without issue. Schnitzer's group, including Marika, made it to the hull of the ship fifteen minutes after the order had been given. Because there was no way to check if the inside was pressurized or not – and simply drilling a hole into a space ship was a would-be death sentence for anyone inside – Marika brought invasion gear with her. The fancy name really didn't do the mechanism justice. It was a portable mini-pressure chamber. It couldn't generate oxygen, but it provided an air-tight dome. Drilling a hole into a spaceship inside such a dome was no longer a real problem.

"Captain? This is the bridge. I'm taking command in your absence." Chiaki's voice came through on the short range communicators that everyone was wearing.

"Okay. See you soon, Chiaki-chan." Marika knew that despite Chiaki no longer showing any reaction to it, she still hated it when she was addressed with _-chan_ by her name. The drilling proceeded faster than planned – the ship was structurally weak. And Marika had been right to bring the invasion gear. The inside was still pressurized.

Schnitzer and four of his men went inside before Marika, who was wielding a custom made rifle that fired heavy paralyzing electrostatic beams. One hit from it was enough to knock out any adult for twelve to eighteen hours flat. By turning up the voltage to maximum, it could also kill, but Marika only had that option because she was not naive enough to think there would always be a place for non-lethal force.

But on this ship, there would be no need for any kind of force. Marika felt more than just a little sick when she jumped down into the ship. The gravity and lights were off, making the raid squad resort to light sticks and flashlights mounted to their helmets, suits and weapons. What they saw was beyond inhumane. The walls were smeared with blood and bodies, riddled with holes, were floating through the hallway. The dead were not all in the same uniform. Part of them clearly belonged to the New Galactic Empire. Others bore the insignia of the Galactic Republic. And yet again others were simply dressed in white coats, civilians, scientists from the look of it.

The air was breathable but drops of blood were everywhere. Opting to skip taking off their helmets, the group moved towards the closer end of the hallway. It was more of the same. Cold bodies and blood. Exploring the ship, they found that it had four decks and each deck had two sets of hallways that went around the entire square. The center room was locked, barricaded, on every deck. Marika looked over her shoulder, towards the hallway they had just left. "One hundred and forty."

Schnitzer looked at his captain. "You counted the dead?"

"A ship of this size containing so many people is unnatural. Even more so because they were fighting. How did they get on board? What was so valuable to resort to so much violence?" Marika kept a com line open to the bridge. "Coorie, if we power up their generator, do you think enough systems are going to come online to get an idea of what happened here?"

"It's possible. It looks really bad over there, so it's possible their generator is toast, but it's worth a try."

"Should I come over, Captain?" Yayoi was not comfortable around dead bodies, but being part of a pirate crew she knew that dealing with something like this was always somewhat of a possibility.

"No. I don't want anyone down here that isn't trained for raids." _And I don't want any of you to have to push corpses around to get around_. "Schnitzer, how is that door coming?"

"It's a sealed bulkhead. We could try to blow it open, but if the bridge is behind this it might damage a lot of sensitive equipment. And considering the ship's state, we might rip the whole thing apart with how big of a charge we'd need to get through a door this thick."

"Okay, forget the door. Split into two teams. Find the engine room and once you do, get Yayoi to walk you through the reboot process via com." Marika turned around, kicked herself off the ground and floated towards the end of the hallway, her crew in tow.

"We've been aboard a lot of Stellar Alliance vessels and about a dozen from the NGE. Nothing ever looked like this. It is all self-contained. I thought that maybe this is some sort of life boat, but that doesn't explain the lack of engines or the presence of a bridge. Coorie, are you there?"

"Yes. What do you need, Captain?"

"Compress all the surveillance from our suits and send it to Lynn through the usual channel."

"Will do. But what are you expecting to come out of that?"

"Lynn works with Jenny and they have their hand in a lot of transportation business. Someone has to have shipped the materials and tech for this. If Jenny didn't, Lynn can find out who did. Even the NGE and the GF don't fight like this without something important being on the line. And I'm still curious how this ship appeared out of thin air."

Finding the engine was one thing, but restarting it was another entirely. It wasn't just turned off; it was dead and in the same state of death as most of the crew – riddled with holes. Yayoi could tell at a glance that just trying to turn that on would either do nothing or result in an explosion. It was a highly modern variant of the subspace fusion quantifier engine that the Galactic Empire had used in their newest warships just before the collapse.

Marika was back on the Bentenmaru shortly after they realized that getting power to the ship would be a lot more effort. They started moving a direct support cable from the Bentenmaru to the unknown vessel, diverting some of their power to boot up their system.

"So, Coorie?" Marika was equally curious and worried.

"Gimme a sec. The systems were all cold until a moment ago so it'll take some time for them to all boot up. Okay, here we go. Vessel F-4461726B. No name, just a factory serial. Let's see then… there is a lot of dead sectors and the mainframe is throwing up a ton of errors. I guess they had a shootout inside the bridge, too. But it looks like the camera feeds are fine. There is a lot of them, what should I do?"

"Make a copy and send them to my terminal. Did anything other than the camera feeds survive?"

"Bits and pieces. There is no manifest, no manual, there's little in general. A massive chunk of the mainframe data all relates to the engine and something else that's just labeled WD-06. That's where most of the damage is. And it is encrypted. There is no way to decrypt just bits and pieces, sorry."

"No, that's fine. If the camera feed survived, we'll find out what happened. Can you access the actual cameras?"

"Sure. There were a **lot** of them on board though. It lists them by ID instead of location so this might take some searching but there were 272 cameras in total. To compare, the Bentenmaru has 48 and we're a much bigger ship. Any specific camera I'm looking for?"

"Tell me when you find the bridge. Call it a hunch but after seeing how brutal that fight ended up being, I'm reconsidering just opening up those bulkheads to the bridge."

While Marika and Coorie were talking, Misa had entered the bridge. "I see you have everything under control."

"Kind of. There is still a lot that's bothering me though. And… I'm sorry Misa, but the people on board of that ship are beyond any help."

"I was watching the surveillance from my room. Even for the New Galactic Empire, that's abhorrent and needlessly violent." Being the ship's doctor, Misa had dealt with a lot of pain and death over the years. "The only time I've seen something like this was when I went down to the Sea of Lightning Star after the orbital bombardment." Misa didn't treat Marika like a little girl. She could tell that she was still working through the aftermath of that fight, but she didn't hesitate to bring it up in conversation when she needed to.

"Are Kane and the others still asleep?" Marika wanted to know.

"I haven't heard anything. It's more of a mystery incident than a thrilling one, so there isn't much reason to wake them up. And our night crew seems to be doing a fine job." Misa liked to bolster the confidence of their new crew members. She in particular had been happy to have them. Having a few more girls on board, especially on the bridge, was not a bad thing. Especially since Luca was tight-lipped and Coorie was not the most girly girl around.

Deep down, Marika had been a bit conflicted about bringing on former Hakuoh students as pirates. It was no longer a job with a safety net but more of a way of life now. Ultimately, it was the crew's choice whether they came on board or not, but **letting** them come on board in the first place still made her a little guilty. But that was just part of the burden a captain had to shoulder. And she was glad that they had come.

"Chiaki, come." Marika didn't need to give elaborate reasons. She was the captain and everyone was used to the idea of following her. Leaving the bridge ahead of her second-in-command, Marika noticed Chiaki catch up a few seconds later, the two of them on the way to the loading bay. "What do you make of all of this?"

"It's fishy."

"I thought so too. And when there is something fishy, there is usually-"

"Something valuable."

"And we are pirates. Now the big question is what the valuable thing is. A ship that appears out of nowhere, with everyone on board dead. Or in other words, nobody on board."

"Are you thinking it is on auto-pilot, like Serenity's golden arc?"

"Not on auto-pilot but able to traverse in ways other than FTL. Even with FTL, it takes hours, days, weeks or months to traverse the galaxy. But this thing just appeared without a heat trail and without a touchdown signature."

"The engine?"

"Doesn't look like anything we have ever come across, right? This is just my instinct as a pirate, although it's a bit funny for me to say this after only this long, but that engine… I bet that is what they were after. Something about it is special. Special enough to kill everyone on board to get it." Marika entered the room where they kept their space suits and just started undressing without a care in the world.

Chiaki didn't mind watching. This, being Marika's girlfriend, her lover, was not what she had set out to achieve when she joined the crew of the Bentenmaru, but she liked it. Marika met her expectations and didn't treat her any different than before. She was, even to Marika, a screw member first and her lover second.

"Are you going over there?"

"Yeah. Chiaki, can you press the com button to the bridge?" Marika was in the middle of putting on a spacesuit. After the connection was established, Marika gave new orders.

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

Four hours had passed after the Bentenmaru had extracted everything useful from the unknown ship, including the entire engine. Getting it out had been an exercise in absurdity. Having to cut open the hull by the engine room had taken nearly an hour by itself. Cutting out the engine itself another forty-five minutes. During all of this, Marika ran back and forth between the unknown vessel and the Bentenmaru, making sure the surroundings were monitored, that all frequencies were checked and most of all, that there were no bad surprises waiting for them.

Coorie managed to get the camera feeds sorted out two hours into the process of stealing the ships engine. Together with the camera feeds came a lot of confidential data from the New Galactic Empire. As it turned out, things were different from what Marika had expected. It was the Federation that stormed the place and initially captured the ship, only to be decimated by reinforcements of the NGE. The final moments within the bridge was a single scientist from the Federation operating the console seemed to control navigation.

The electronic warfare specialist discovered more still. The ship was a prototype vessel that was designed to bring the NGE a decisive edge in the war, a miniaturized version at scale 1:112 of the real thing. A gigantic warship capable of holding thousands of troops, with no heat signature or requirement to travel through FTL. The information that Marika really wanted was locked behind even more powerful encryption, and Coorie needed more time to get through that.

Meanwhile, San-Daime had begun taking apart the engine they had stolen. Yayoi was with him, documenting every screw, every bolt and every piece they removed or shifted on video feed and a digital catalog. Marika had ordered them to be extremely careful after all.

And it was now, right as the four hour mark had passed, that both Coorie and San-Daime almost competed for Marika's attention, incredibly excited over something. Battered by their demands to listen to them first, Marika raised her voice. "Stop!" That got both San-Daime and Coorie to calm down. Seeing the adult Marika command authority like that, with her voice loud and clear, Misa was reminded of Blaster Ririka.

"Coorie, you go first. San-Daime, I want you to listen to her, it might be about the engine."

Coorie adjusted her glasses, sitting backwards in her seat, hands on the backrest. "That engine is a marvel of technology from what little data I could salvage, but the real treasure is the thing that the engine has at the core. They're calling it an Atomic Conversion Displacement Field Generator." Coorie turned back around and produced a lot of noise on her keyboard until a graphic showed up on the captain's terminal, where Marika was standing. "This is regular propulsion." it showed a simplified version of how standard propulsion worked, along with the maximum speed the best known standard propulsion achieved. "This is a faster than light dive through sub space." This time the graphic split into three, showing a tunnel of unstable space between two points in regular space. "But even FTL isn't instant travel."

More keyboard noises and the graphic changed completely. "This is an entirely new method of travel."

The graphic was still split in two, showing a ship that was just drifting still in space until it suddenly disappeared and disappeared in the other screen. "This is how that ship appeared without our sensors finding anything."

"What's happening there?" Marika was no engineer or physicist so she had no idea about the higher technical intricacies of FTL or even whatever was exceeding that.

"In one word, warping. Now, that sounds like real science-fiction, but what is actually happening is this." The keyboard was assaulted a third time and the graphic explanation repeated itself with a secondary layer added to it, showing everything in absolute slow motion. "Here, right at the start, the ship sends out some kind of information that is transmitted through subspace. Since information has no mass, it surpasses the speed of light in subspace, going millions of times faster than a ship would. For all purposes, it's basically instant within our galaxy."

"Basically, it's a subspace communicator. The same thing that lets us talk to other ships or Show millions and billions of kilometers away." Marika was just putting one and one together.

"Yep, exactly like that. Now, here is the key difference. This information behaves like a boomerang, or a yo-yo, or anything that bounces back. It goes to whatever target coordinate you give it and returns with a spatial imprint. Think of it like making a photo of some distant coordinate. This by itself would be an amazing tool to spy, but sadly converting the information is way beyond our computers. I checked how long it would take to render one micro-millimeter, one millionth of a millimeter, in visual form."

"And?"

"Around 118 years."

"That's no good then. But I assume the real treat is coming up now."

"The real purpose of this snapshot of space is basically to-" Coorie was cut off when San-Daime couldn't wait anymore.

"The engine is not exactly an 'engine' the way we think of it. It draw electromagnetic energy from subspace. Think of it as having a permanent FTL window active inside a containment field. That is what the engine does. That can produce a lot of energy, but what's more important, having that FTL window open is what allows that sending and receiving of snapshots from anywhere in the galaxy. That engine is **marvelous**! It basically sends out a scout, that snapshot, and then it sends the whole thing!"

"The whole thing?"

"Yes! It creates some sort of field that envelops the ships, converts it into information, and then sends that information through the FTL portal to the target coordinate, where the information, loaded with reassembly code, re-creates whatever was sent through. It's an actual real-life warp drive."

"It converts us into information? But isn't it impossible to turn something with mass into something that has no mass?"

San-Daime paused a little. "Technically speaking that is right and I can't actually explain how exactly it does that. If I could, I would be a complete genius. But we saw the ship appear. I can tell from the engine structure and setup that this is what it does." _And there was actually a small book with research notes tucked away inside._

"Can we use it? Being able to go anywhere in the galaxy instantly would be amazing." Marika thought she had stolen something absolutely incredible.

"Hm, not as-is. There is a ton of damage and even if there wasn't, you probably have to custom build some sort of interface for the controls and the engine itself."

"San-Daime." Coorie was curious about something. "What if we hook it up to our FTL drive and power it through alpha and beta?"

"No, no, that could technically work but we'd never get the juice required out of alpha and beta to go anywhere far. Not to mention the stress it would put on them."

Marika saw an opportunity. "What if we went not far? Instead of using it to travel, it could give us a great edge in combat. This information reassembly method is safe, right?"

"Something would have to move into the exact space where we want to go within one microsecond, give or take a few fractions of one. It's more likely to get caught in a surprise supernova coming out of nowhere." Coorie was very certain about those odds.

"San-Daime, **could** you hook that engine up to our FTL drive and reactors? Coorie, you could create some kind of interface for it, right?"

"The engine core was fine, so if we manage to repair the containment field, it could work. But there is no space to put that thing anywhere on board like this. Never mind that repairing something like that is really beyond me. We'll have to go and find an expert engineer."

"Please do. Coorie, if you know anyone, contact them. For the first time since I became the captain, we are actually loaded with cash. If we can make this work, we will make this work." Marika saw lots of applications for that. "San-Daime, if we're able to power the drive with our generators, how far do you think we'll be able to go?"

"I can't say. Considering the energy output for our FTL window to jump, I can at best make a really rough guess."

"Your guesses are most likely better than most expert's."

"Maybe, and this a big maybe, about a million kilometers. Or about three light seconds. Give or take."

"That is plenty of space to get an advantage in ship to ship battles."

"I think we might have to seriously consider having both reactors overhauled for that… but that will cost a fortune." San-Daime was worried that just doing one of those warp jumps might deep-fry both reactors.

"How much?" Marika knew that, right now, they had deep pockets, but those deep pockets could be emptied out quite quickly when it came to ship upgrades and overhauls.

San-Daime pointed at Coorie, who did some quick calculations. "About half of our savings if we get a good deal."

"That much?!" The captain had not been ready for that.

"We're an old ship." San-Daime felt like the overhaul had been an inevitable thing eventually, but not this soon.

Marika fell down into her seat and put her left hand to her forehead. "I guess money is there to spend it after all. Especially if you're a pirate."

"There is the option of selling that engine." Chiaki knew that this was going to be shut down, but she wanted to be the one to make that suggestion so nobody else had to.

"I'd rather this not fall into the hands of someone that might use it for unsavory things." Marika was quite aware that a pirate saying something like that had a bit of a funny feel attached to it. But nobody really said anything. They all understood what their captain had meant. The kind of pirates that would rob, murder and torch civilians instead of the invaders. "Sasha, plot a course for the Stellar Primus Scrapyard. We're going shopping."

"Say, captain, the data says this was a prototype. And it looked like the Galactic Federation was trying to get rid of it. They'd probably demand we hand it over if they get wind that it was stolen instead of destroyed."

"I was thinking the same thing. We are pretty far away from the nearest habitable planet and outpost because of our last mission, but that doesn't mean the NGE can't have ships traveling here at FTL already." Marika looked over her shoulder and couldn't see Schnitzer. "Chiaki, where's Schnitzer?"

"Helping out with the salvage. We had to move a lot of it right to the storage rooms because that engine is taking up a lot of room in the loading bay." Chiaki was often as well aware and informed of what was happening on the ship as Misa was.

Connecting her terminal ship wide, Marika just called for Schnitzer. "Schnitzer and all battle personnel. We are going to terminate the unknown vessel with explosive charges. I want that thing blown to bits so small that the NGE will need a dust pan and air tight bag to collect the dust. Get one of our asteroid nets and collect all bodies out. Put them out into space and make sure they're on a stable rotation." Marika closed the link and turned to her EW expert. "Coorie, once we leave, send a message to the FWRA. Erase our meta data, transponder code and signature. I don't want anything to trace back to us. By the time they get here, our FTL and heat signature will be gone."

 _She just cannot leave those poor sods out here in space, their families and friends wondering forever what happened to them._ Misa looked upon her captain proudly from her chair. And so did Chiaki. Marika on the other hand was filled with regret that she could not see to the safe delivery of those bodies herself. The Federation War Reparation Agency handled the return of bodies and eventual payouts to the surviving members of the families they left behind. She didn't know what would happen to the bodies of the NGE soldiers, but given that the Federation had strict guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war, they were a decent chance that they would at least send the bodies to the New Galactic Empire.

Watching the unknown vessel blow up in a singular, well timed and synchronized explosion, the Bentenmaru finally left the uninhabited space, heading back to civilization. They would be in FTL for close to six hours until touchdown. There was a huge, empty lot of space where they would arrive, so even after a long jump like that it wouldn't matter if their target position was inaccurate. The further one jumped, the more inaccurate the jump got. With a jump of six hours, the margin of error was just about a hundred thousand kilometers, give or take.

Marika dropped into bed face first with her clothes still on. She had changed so many times tonight that she just didn't care anymore. But there was no rest for the wicked. Chiaki pulled on her arm, dragged her off the bed and Marika just let herself fall to the floor. "Chiaki-chan… just lemme sleep. I'll have to be up right after we drop out of FTL."

"And you want to get up and have your entire uniform smell like sweat and bed?" Pulling Marika up, Chiaki couldn't suppress a yawn herself and blushed, hoping that Marika was just going to ignore it.

"See! You're just as tired as me..." Falling backwards on the bed and dragging Chiaki down with her, Marika put her arms around her girlfriend, her eyes shut tight. "Let's sleep..."

Covering Marika's mouth with her right hand, Chiaki had no problem wrestling herself free and sitting up. This was nothing that unusual for her. Marika worked too hard lots of times, especially since the war broke out, and this exact scenario had happened before around a hundred times. Taking off the black boots that reached all the way to Marika's knees, turned her over and pulling the coat from her back, it was like stripping a doll. The hat was the only thing she had taken off herself.

With the coat gone, she turned Marika over again, unbuttoning her vest and shirt that she wore underneath first, then pulling down the zipper that kept the black miniskirt in place. The school uniform was long gone, but she had replaced the light blue miniskirt with a black one that was a little longer. Marika herself didn't want to do that but prior to the war, and even now, Marika had become known as "Miniskirt Marika", a nickname Chiaki didn't like all that much, but the customers loved it.

Having stripped Marika down to just her underwear, Chiaki knew that it was impossible to get her back up and to brush her teeth. "At least get under the covers yourself! I know you're still awake!" Chiaki sounded annoyed because she wanted Marika to not ignore her.

And sure enough, the captain struggled about on top of the bed and then crawled under the cover. Chiaki still had to undress herself. At the beginning she had been just a deck hand until Marika had one day just promoted her to second-in-command. Chiaki thought that the crew would reject her as Marika's stand-in, but they were surprisingly welcome. Misa even went so far as to be welcoming and happy that at least one of their captains was the reasonable sort. Saying that in earshot of Marika had caused the captain to sulk and pout for a good five minutes.

About a week later, after Marika had carelessly talked to her old school friend Mami, the Bentenmaru received a large package that contained a brand new captain's uniform. Or as it turned out, vice-captain uniform. There were no epaulettes or cape and it was all around a bit less flashy than Marika's uniform. But it was very much clear that whoever wore this would be seen as the second-in-command aboard the Bentenmaru.

Slipping into bed herself after she finished undressing, Chiaki was promptly assaulted with a big hug and, immediately after, with light snoring. It didn't take much for Chiaki herself to fall asleep as well.

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

The Bentenmaru returned to their piracy duties after making a stop at the Stellar Primus Scrapyard and finding a whole team of engineers that were bending over backwards to work for cheap in trying to repair that engine. A good bunch of them left after Chiaki threatened to shoot dead anyone that would _break the damn thing_ and a few more still left after Marika disarmed Chiaki's threat and supplanted it with one that was even worse. Anyone unqualified that was just itching to work on something new and exciting, anyone that got in the way, would be left marooned on some asteroid in the absolute middle of nowhere, needing a miracle for someone to find them. Six people remained at the end. Some of the Bentenmaru's personnel remained at the scrapyard to protect the engine and make sure that none of the engineers tried to make off with hurriedly made up blueprints.

This left them a little short staffed for the raid on the secure cargo transporter and the four corvette class SI warships that protected it. One of Marika's contacts came in handy in such situations; Jenny Dolittle. Remaining at Space University with her lover, Lynn Lambretta, she had total control of what had become a massive space faring company, Fairy Jane Inc. At the surface, the company was growing rapidly through government contracts, connections and sometimes even suspiciously conveniently private contracts. But in the underworld, beneath that, was the true face of the company. With the fall of the Galactic Empire, Jenny had gambled everything on profiting off of the conflict that would follow. With Lynn by her side, Jenny bullied and blackmailed her way into many an advantageous situation.

One of the services that Shadow Jane offered was the covert transport of mercenaries. Shadow Jane was what the underground version of Fairy Jane was often called unofficially among criminals among which Pirates of all sorts were counted now. Having two dozen extra hands on board came in handy, although it was another big expense, even after Jenny gave her a friendship deal.

The ship was already ready for combat and it was almost time now. "FTL jump!" Marika's order was executed immediately and with perfect accuracy. Four pirate ships were coming together to blast the stellar alliance out of the black sky.

They were in FTL less than fifteen seconds, achieving touchdown exactly where they wanted. The Bentenmaru main crew was manning all positions, with the night crew on standby in their quarters, patched into the bridge console of their respective superior, seeing what they were doing and learning.

"Diffusion mines now! Schnitzer, begin main cannon charge in twenty-five seconds! Chiaki, launch HDE missiles and target the weapon's systems of all corvettes equally! Coorie, start a feint attempt to hack the transport, then focus on the front leading corvette. Omni-directional scan now!" Marika gave all over her orders without hesitation and so quickly that there was not even room to cough in-between each one.

The corvettes operated in a highly compact formation right around the transport, opening fire on the pirates without warning. There was no need for introductions just yet. Marika would wait with that until she had shown them what a pirate could do.

Acting faster than any of the other pirate ships that achieved touchdown seconds after the Bentenmaru, Marika's ship drew almost all of their fire. The diffusion mines made short work of any beam attacks and Kane was too skilled a pilot for mere missiles or cannon shots to hit the ship. Turning the ship around with thrusters during full propulsion caused the entire crew to fell almost 3Gs worth of gravity for a moment and made the hull groan. But in that instead they were right in position to give the first corvette a full broadside and tear them in half. "Schnitzer!"

Firing their main cannons, the first corvette shook dangerously as the beam hammered past them, hitting the second corvette, furthest from them, right in the tail, destroying their propulsion in an instant. "High density light blast!"

Coorie pushed a button and the Bentenmaru unleashed targeted blasts of light rays that carried a massive density of information, allowing Coorie to establish a forced communications link with the targeted ships for a brief moment. "Welcome to the front lines gentlemen! Now if you don't mind, hand over your valuables, hand over your money and hand over your women our it won't be the engines we'll blast in half the next time! Surrender now and you will still be able to call home and get someone to come and take you back! I am Kato Marika, captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru! Resist and we will blast you out of this vast black sky! Now, make up your mind!" And she cut the transmission without waiting for anyone to reply.

Marika's expression was haughty, arrogant and imposing all the way through, playing around with a large beam cannon that she was resting on her right shoulder, occasionally pointing it at the screen that transmitted the video. "Chiaki-chan, do you think I should turn around and yell _fire_ to Schnitzer during my speech?"

"This is no time to mess around, captain." Chiaki was helping out Schnitzer still, firing a second salvo of missiles.

"Corvette two is standing down. Their engine is bust anyway." Hyakume thought that they gave up too easily. "Guess the Stellar Alliance is running out of people that want to duke it out with the pirates after they got their asses handed to them so many times."

"That was **too** easy. Chiaki, target their weapon systems. If necessary, fire a SHDE and have it go off right next to their hull." The difference between a simply High Density Energy missile and a Super HDE missile was the blast force.

But contrary to Marika's expectations, the second corvette didn't suddenly fire but even turned off their computers after their main cannon took considerable damage and was rendered inoperable.

The entire Bentenmaru shook violently when the third corvette left themselves fully open to the other pirate ships to fire their main cannon at the Bentenmaru, only to miss by about fifty meters. "I guess the other two aren't give up so easily." Marika was impressed they'd take such a huge risk just to fire at the Bentenmaru. And it hadn't panned out for them. Their engines exploded with enough force that the last ten percent of the corvette were just gone after taking missile fire from the Viracocha.

"Captain, there's a transmission from the Viracocha." Coorie put the message through and Marika received it on her terminal.

"Captain Kachua. What is it?" It was an audio only transmission to minimize vulnerabilities on the systems of both pirate ships.

"There are three of us and three of them. The Darkdread Bloodlust is already boarding the ship you nearly blew up and using them as cover. We're about to board what is left of those fools that took a shot at you. You're fine with that, yes?"

"Go ahead. Show them that we pirates aren't to be messed around with." Marika enjoyed situations like these a little. It was when she could show others the skill of the Bentenmaru's crew, it was a moment of pride for her. And robbing the Stellar Alliance military blind was also very satisfying. "It's time to show those pesky little military eggheads who rules this corner of space! Coorie, how long-"

"Push," Coorie said and immediately after, the engines of the front leading corvette overloaded and exploded in silent fireworks. "Oh, sorry Captain, I wasn't sure how much longer you were gonna talk to to the Viracocha so I went ahead and overloaded their system. They should be floating in the dark in there. They'll have air for a day or two, though."

There was no hesitation in Marika's actions. As far as she was concerned, this was just a regular day, another raid on the Stellar Alliance. Stealing from the bad guys. "All Bentenmaru raiding personnel, get ready! It's time for some real piracy!"

With their weapons at the ready and Schnitzer at the front, the Bentenmaru crew found that the crew of the second corvette had committed mutiny to get out of this alive. Their captain was tied up, floating upside down in the brig, and a number of sailors, unarmed and with their hands above their head, were there when the Bentenmaru hacked the airlock and got in. Marika was both relieved that she didn't have to shoot at real people but also disappointed that actual military would give up so quickly. Grabbing one of the sailors, the one that was sweating torrents of cold sweat whenever she so much as glanced at him, Marika was annoyed with herself when the sailor just started floating into the air. "Coorie. Gravity."

The sailor plummeted to the ground and Marika had solid ground back under her feet. And this time she did it right. Pulling him up by his collar, Marika managed, just barely, to lift the guy off his feet. Her arm and back was wincing in pain but she maintained her expression, a haughty and aggressive smirk. "The hell is all this? This is the Stellar Alliance military? You kidding me? Are you some sort of reserve because the real soldiers are all on vacation?"

"Y-Yes!" The sailor, looking as young as barely eighteen, was too intimidated to lie through his teeth. "The entire frontier division is taking part in another mission!"

"Hey, will you shut up?! You can't go and tell pirates that kinda stuff!" Another one of the soldiers was not nearly as intimidated until Schnitzer picked him up by grabbing his entire head with his hand and just lifting him up that way. "It's true! It's true I say! Command is planning something big! But I swear we don't know!"

"I swear too!"

 _No wonder that they went down this easily. If they're all reserve, this is probably the first time they saw real combat or a real pirate._ "You're not even worth spacing." Marika dropped the guy. Schnitzer left his comrade down as well. "Tie them up. The SI can come and get them after we're done here. You lot! Don't leave anything behind! We're taking anything and everything and if one of them idiots there gives us trouble, put them in the airlock so that they can get a premium view of the black sky out there first hand!" All of Marika's behavior was still theatrics, even now. In a very strange way she was still a performer. But now she was robbing the military and without being asked to. These were real crimes and she was a real criminal; just like her great-grandfather, the first captain of the Bentenmaru.

Heading towards the bridge herself, Marika was glad when Chiaki caught up to her. "Something big is happening, right now."

"I heard. I don't think this transport is a trap though."

"A trap for pirates would have to be bigger, get more of us together so they can strike a decisive blow. If they were fighting the Federation, we would know, Show would have contracted us about that. Jenny would have told me about that as well when I contacted her." Marika felt like she wasn't seeing the big picture.

"You don't think the big thing is chasing after the ship we blew up, do you?" Chiaki arrived at the bridge with Marika, where the mercenaries that Marika had hired were already finished capturing the soldiers on board. Since Marika was deep in thought, Chiaki stepped up. Her black clothes and the big hat, which was not quite as big as Marika's, still commanded a lot of respect. "What are you standing around here for? The rest of the ship doesn't search itself! I want all of these idiots accounted for and secured!" Chiaki also liked the theatrics she could put on during a mission. She hadn't had nearly as much chance to do so as Marika when they were still going to school, but Marika let her take point pretty often.

Marika suddenly became fierce, looked around and the very way she did this put the fear of god into the soldiers. Although the story went that if the Bentenmaru attacked you, all you had to do was cooperate, but the other version of that story was that those that didn't cooperate were never heard from again. "I don't believe for **one second** that none of you bastards know what the hell your damn military is doing!" Marika thought that swearing would raise her pirate credibility further. "So here is what we're gonna do. You see this lovely lady with the big gun here by my side? She's got a serious temper problem you see, so I'm thinking, why not let her calm down by shooting one of you every minutes. But I might change my mind about that if I hear something I want to hear. Like what the **actual** **soldiers** are doing!" Marika could tell from Chiaki's pissed off look, that fit the lie perfectly now, that she was going to get scolded later. _Sorry, Chiaki-chan!_

"So let's start by counting to ten, shall we? One, two-"

"Who the hell is going to wait until you're done counting?!" Chiaki stepped forward, pointed her gun right at the face of one of the captured soldiers that sat on the ground. The shot from her rifle went right in the ground a few centimeters behind the soldier. Marika had pushed down her rifle with such perfect timing that it was like they had practiced it. _I knew you would pick up on my cue, Marika. This is what you get for making up lies about my personality_.

 _I said I'm sorry, Chiaki-chan!_ Marika had been worried there for a moment.

"I… I know." One of the higher ranking soldiers in the back got on his feet. "I overheard the officers talking in their lounge while I was on serving duty. Operation **Sin**. Almost the entire fleet has been deployed to FF-10." The soldier felt something cold run down his forehead. "Frontier Fortress 10. They are going to take Frontier Fortress 10."

=== Time for a Pirate Break ===


	2. Chapter 2

"This isn't much of a haul. Because we did the lion's share of work we got first dibs on the transport, but I think we're better off just letting the others owe us one and opt out of taking anything. I know we're short for money after hiring mercs for this gig, especially when they turned out to be unnecessary." Hyakume was contacting Marika from inside the cargo ship. "We could probably get about a hundred-thousand if we take all the most valuable stuff, but that's gonna piss off the others. And a hundred grand isn't really much."

"If we take nothing it'll blatantly look like we are making them owe us. Take a bunch of stuff that seems useful, not pricey, and tell them we don't have anymore storage space because we picked up some other stuff along the way." Marika had her feet on her console, arms crossed and looking at ceiling while talking to Hyakume via audio only channel. _Half of that is the truth anyway. We dropped off the engine but we haven't put everything back where it belongs yet. To be honest, it's chaos on the lower decks._ "Luca, how far is it to frontier fortress ten?"

"Too far for a single FTL jump from here. If we travel purely by FTL, about thirty hours. It is the frontier after all." As navigator, Luca was highly adept at calculating travel times and such on the fly. It was basically part of the job after all. "If the New Galactic Empire is already on their way we will not arrive in time."

 _What to do? I am not going to go up against a large fleet of NGE ships without even knowing what this is about. I'm a pirate. Even if I'm a merciful one, I'm not a good Samaritan. Not to mention it'd be suicide to just charge in there._ Taking her boots off the console, Marika turned a little in her seat to check where Chiaki was. When she couldn't see her on the bridge, she turned to the next best thing. "Misa, what do you think about all of this?"

"The frontier is basically where the real pirates hung out all this time. Those aren't good people like you are, captain. If they and the NGE fight each other, it's a net benefit for the entire galaxy in terms of bad people biting the dust. I know I shouldn't say that as a doctor, but those guys basically signed up for something like this to happen eventually."

"Hm… you might be right. You shouldn't say stuff like that as a doctor." Marika just smirked. Misa knew full and well that this was against her professional creed, but it was hard to sympathize with murderers and people serving a dictatorial military. "I think we'll have to get involved though."

"Why is that?" Misa stood up now and walked next to the captain's chair.

"Scenario one. The frontier pirates win and beat up the NGE. That is going to make them seriously cocky and probably make the NGE back off from this sector of space. Not only is that gonna make our main target go away, we'll also have to deal with a bunch of competition that isn't exactly adhering to the behavioral code I laid down. That's a definite losing situation for us no matter what."

"It could also cause the NGE to come back with an even bigger fleet and clean up the entire sector instead."

"That's the other outcome of scenario one and honestly, that's even worse." Marika just waved her hand in rejection. "Scenario two, the NGE takes the fortress. All the pirates that survive the battle are going to be out and about murdering and pillaging as much as they can. And the NGE will have a stronghold in the sector that nobody can take from them. They might even move in more troops. So again, a losing situation."

"So no matter who wins, things will get a lot worse for us." Misa sighed in disappointment. _She's really gotten a good head on her shoulders to think that far ahead._

"You didn't consider scenario three."

"They wipe each other out?"

"Close. They all die. The pirates gone, the NGE fleet gone. That way there's no trouble. I was thinking we could take the place for ourselves, for all the pirates that follow my creed, but there's way too much space for us to defend. So I am thinking of this – we bring in the Stellar Alliance. Turn the whole thing into chaos. We ourselves have no way to fight a battle that large, not even if we bring in all the pirates we're on good terms with. But we do have to make sure the Stellar Alliance doesn't take the base for themselves. So that is where we come in."

"You've become quite devious, captain." Misa looked enormously proud.

"Don't say devious. Say experienced." Marika looked smug. "Coorie!"

"Yes?" Coorie leaned backwards and glanced towards the top of the bridge.

"Can you find me the blueprints of the frontier base?"

"Sure thing." Coorie didn't even ask what it was for.

"Misa, what is the scariest thing that can happen on a ship?"

"A virus outbreak. Chemical weapons. Loss of life support." Misa listed just a few worst case scenarios.

"The engine going kaboom. No power means no life support. Most engines leave radiation, too. A big hole in the hull, usually, to top it off. It's the apex of all worst case scenarios. So with a station as big as that, how much power do you think they're drawing?"

Misa groaned in amazement. "A lot."

"Imagine if their power generators were to blow up. The whole thing would become uninhabitable. Maybe it'd even tear the planet apart."

"That is a lot of killing though. I know you don't like-"

"A station that big is going to have alarms for when something happens to the generator. Even if we blow it up, it's no problem if we just ring the evacuation alarm right before. No base, no one stays, no one brings us trouble. Sometimes maintaining the status quo is all we can do. I figured that out a while ago."

"How are we gonna get in there, though?"

"Still working on that. I thought at first we could just land on the planet, far enough away from the fortress, but they no doubt have sensors covering the whole thing, even if it's only long range stuff it'll be strong enough to pick up a landing craft. And going for a space walk outside sensor range is just crazy. I then thought we could maybe ride a large asteroid or something but that's also pretty insane, not to mention actually having to find one big enough to hide us but not big enough that we can't shove it. No, those are all out. We'll have to find a different way in. Because we're all wanted we can't just pretend to be civilians and sign up for either military. Not to mention how dangerous that would be." Marika just kept going and going with rejected ideas.

"You're thinking about this more seriously than I expected."

"I'm the captain, I'm responsible for my crew and that doesn't just mean today, it also means tomorrow and a hundred days from now."

"You're gotten good at being reassuring." Misa chuckled. "What about that new engine we picked up? Can't we use that to just warp in from the distance and land on the planet surface?"

"If it was ready, yeah."

"I have no doubt you'll come up with a plan the rest of us are going to call crazy anyway. But you know the entire crew trusts you with their life."

"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm thinking so hard." Marika sighed briefly. "If it was just one ship we could hijack a SA vessel but they are no doubt going to come in with a lot of… no, wait. We wouldn't have to actually take over a vessel that is dispatched from their base. If they are going to make a last minute effort to prevent the NGE from taking a stronghold out here, they will also collect everyone in the area. Coorie! Kane! Find me out how many Stellar Alliance vessels are within one to two hours FTL windows of here! I don't care if you have to call in a favor or owe someone!" Marika jumped out of her chair. "Misa, get your stuff ready. It's time for some piracy." Walking past her medic with all the dignity and posture of a veteran pirate captain, Marika hit the small button on her collar. "Schnitzer, Chiaki, get the mercs ready. We'll see some real action yet. Combat readiness in no more than thirty minutes." She didn't need any long winded explanations.

Among pirates, Marika was somewhat of a celebrity. Working for her came with the expectations to get home in one piece and to see a lot of things. But it also meant adhering to some rather strict rules. No wanton killing when avoidable. No killing civilians under any circumstances. No pillaging other than what the captain cleared. No questioning orders. There was a legend about an entire group of mercenaries that went against her and ended up marooned on a lonely rock in the vast emptiness of space. Nobody ever heard from them again.

Kane came through before Coorie did. A single heavy cruiser from the Stellar Alliance was patrolling the outskirts of a planet not too far away. A planet that had remained under their oppressive protection and was manufacturing a lot of Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, for the alliance. According to Kane, most of the crew was basically shuffled through every thirty-six hours, leaving only a third of the usual crew on board at all times. They hadn't seen combat in a long time because the planet was fairly out of the way.

Sitting on the bridge in full combat gear, a flashy black and red spacesuit that even had hooks on the helmet to fasten her pirate hat, Marika gave the order. "Luca, chart a course to the _Silver Indigo_. Drop us out of FTL outside sensor range. We can't afford for them to get a big head and start a battle to the death, we are going to steal that ship."

A resounding _aye aye captain_ came from everyone on the bridge and seconds later the Bentenmaru was in FTL. "Everyone clear on what they have to do?" Marika got no answer. "You lot I can't hear you!" She still loved to play it up.

"Aye captain!" They responded almost in unison, humoring their captain. It took the tension out of the air when she did something like this.

"Listen up! Just because there's only a third of the full crew on board doesn't mean we're going to have it easy! Keep your eyes peeled and guns at the ready. These are trained soldiers! If they start shooting, you shoot back. You all know what I think about killing, but better them than us!" Marika gave a similar speech every time. They had heard about a hundred iterations of this by now at the very least.

Marika, Chiaki, Schnitzer and about two dozen mercenaries were split into three groups – each of them commanding eight mercenaries. And yet they were all squeezed together in the same room. There were really three primary ways to board another ship.

One, to hack their controls and gain access to the airlock. Two, to blow a hole in the hull and work from there by doing a quick spacewalk. Three, to use invasion gear to maintain the pressure on the invaded ship. Marika preferred the first, then the third way. The second was something she avoided unless absolutely necessary because it had a high risk of venting the air out of the ship and killing everyone inside.

With only a third of the crew there and readiness probably being low, Coorie would make short work of their systems. That took care of the engine and cannons as well as getting access. The rest was up to the boarding party.

"Captain." Chiaki had forced herself past two of the mercenaries and was eye to eye with her lover now. Although there were two helmets visors between them, technically. "I understand you are attached to this part of space, but-"

"We're pirates. If we don't throw a wrench in the machinery that is the SA and the NGE, who will? We're not fighting for freedom or for justice or anything. We're doing this because we're pirates. We exist to make life difficult for the suits."

"You're starting to sound like my dad." Chiaki sighed quietly and didn't mind that it showed on her face. "I wish I could say that this whole thing is your most insane plan yet."

"My most insane plan was definitely making the daughter of a rival pirate captain fall in love with me." Marika was punched on the shoulder in response. "Oh, what's this? Mutiny? I should lock you up. Maybe in my quarters so I can give you some reminders on how to treat your captain."

"Oh, shut up." Chiaki's right brow twitched a little. "Maybe I should contact Blaster Ririka sometime and tell her what you've been up to. I might accidentally misrepresent our relationship if I am being harassed this much."

"Harassed? Who is? You? No way-!" Marika acted like the most surprised person in the universe.

"Touchdown in thirty! Captain, time to put the flirting on hold and get ready!" Kane's voice came through the loudspeakers and put a blush on Chiaki's face.

"I'm gonna kill him." Muttering under her breath, Chiaki shook off all of her current feelings and went fully into work mode.

The ship shook a little as it touched down – 800,000 kilometers away from the enemy vessels, about a third outside range. And then it was quiet for a while. After about three minutes, the tension in the hangar was palatable. "Uh, Captain?" Coorie was talking to Marika on a private channel, inside her helmet.

"What is it?"

"The ship is kinda powered down. Life support and such is running, but most computers are turned off. I already have control of their system because even the automated electronic warfare system was powered down. Looks like there are only about six people on board."

Back in her teenage years Marika would have shouted _huh v_ ery loudly and caused a bit of a stir. But not anymore. " _Huh?"_ It was barely audible. "What do you mean, six people? Did they already get raided?"

"No, it looks like there is actually a festival happening down on the planet. Most of the crew is down planet side for it, according to the logs. Less than a tenth of the crew stayed behind to keep things running. What do we do? Go in anyway?"

"Watch the system and start the fire alarm after we boarded. I want them running around like headless chicken." Marika couldn't believe the audacity of the universe. First she ran into a bunch of cowards that just gave up when she was ready for a fight. Then she thought she'd finally have a use for all that hired muscle and this happened. But she would not let this beat her. "All right, listen up you grim lot! Looks like there's a party going on nearby, so after we take the ship we're gonna crash the whole affair!" _We're technically space pirates, so this is somewhat outside our usual area of business. But whatever. If the plundering won't come to me, I'll come to the plundering._

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

"Captain, I see it." One of the mercenaries was able to fly a shuttle which the Bentenmaru now carried with it at all times. Losing a safe home base meant they needed a way to get in and out of planets for supplies and other stuff. And this was one such case of _stuff_. Flying through the low skies of the planet – the _Dawn of Green_ , which was a garden variety planet – Marika and her mercenaries had done away with spacesuits and swapped to kinetic fields.

Those sounded fancy when explained but were really very limited in application. It was like having a layer of really sticky chewing gun around a person, slowing down and potentially blocking low kinetic force objects. A weakly thrown knife would bounce off, but a bullet would still do significant damage. Marika still handed them out to the front line people and her direct crew.

They were inbound to a small village. The planet was largely uninhabited excluding the odd village here and there. It produced a lot of the hops used to brew beer across this sector of space and it showed even from space. Great green fields that stretched further than the horizon. One of those villages was just coming up, scarcely three dozen houses that might well be from two or three thousand years ago going by design choice alone. Every year some of the villages put on tasting tests that would have been hugely popular had the planet not been way out in the boonies like this.

The village had a big plaza, surrounded by very rustic looking houses and brewery facilities. Benches, tables and a lot of tiny ants – people – were all over the place. The village itself had only a single road in and out each, going into the huge fields of hops. Farming planets like this were not rare at all and the people living there were some of the hardest working but also easy going citizens in space.

Sliding open the shuttle door, Marika drew her gun. A much too large rifle that looked much more intimidating than it really was. Hooking a rope into a socket, Marika shouted as hard as she could. "Let's go you lot!"

Descending from the shuttle armed to the teeth and with a lot of noise, the twenty-seven created quite the fuss as they landed at the south end of the plaza. "Pirates! Pirates are here!" Screams were filling the air. Baskets with bread were abandoned, giant glasses full of beer were dropped and people fell to the ground in an attempt to get off their benches.

And within seconds shots were being fired. Mercenaries and pirate alike were firing on tables, in the air and on walls, causing a lot of property damage and scaring away everyone that wasn't trained military. Marika found that her tactic worked a little too well. She could see that there were even soldiers among those that fled. _For crying out loud._ "After them!"

The few soldiers that didn't run were not actually trying to fight. They were all heavily intoxicated, drunk, and unable to mount any decent resistance. It was then that Marika just gave up on finding any excitement for the men whom she had promised excitement and a fight. "Round up the soldiers. Tie them up. Let the populace be unless they start a fight. In that case put the fear of pirates into them and leave em be." Lowering her rifle, Marika flipped over a bench so it was back on its feet and sat down, her back to the actual table. Reaching for a large glass, it was taken out of her reach by a stern looking black haired lady. "Come on Chiaki, I'm over twenty. Even if I wasn't a pirate I'd totally be allowed to drink."

"Drinking on the job?"

"This is almost not a job! I've been chasing danger and a fight all day and it's gotten us nowhere!"

"You should be glad there was no fighting."

"A **little** fighting wouldn't have hurt!"

"Marika." Chiaki was just about the only one in the galaxy that would talk to the captain of the Bentenmaru like this.

"Party pooper."

Chiaki's left brow twitched again. "Now look here..."

"I get it, I get it. You lot! Once you're finished tying up the drunkards it's fine to become drunkards yourself! Gorge yourself, free booze!" Marika's shouting reached far and wide. "Now I'm not being a bad role model by having a drink myself."

"Denied." Chiaki turned the big mug upside down and poured the beer on the dirt ground. "We still have work after this. Or are you telling me that we are going to take it easy while something of that magnitude is going on?"

"Chiaki!" Marika sounded a little whiny now. "One drink! I wanted one drink! You didn't have to waste it, you know!"

"You can get one drink when we know we will have time to sleep it off."

"I am not **that** bad with alcohol!"

Chiaki stared down her captain and made sure to not break eye contact even when Marika tried to smile it all off. "Mendial VII."

Losing her cool, Marika's lips trembled a little. "You promised to not bring that up again."

"I am a pirate. We lie."

"Not to **me**!" Marika jumped to her feet now. "What else are you lying to me about?!"

"You are making it sound like there is anything else I promised."

"What about our vows?!" Shouting so loud that their argument was now attracting the attention of everyone around them – villagers, mercenaries and captive soldiers – Marika fully intended to pay Chiaki back for lying to her.

"What? We're not married!" _What is she saying all of a sudden?!_

Staggering backwards, two steps, Marika let her head hang. "You'd deny all those passionate nights we spend together?"

"What? No. That's not what I-" Chiaki turned scarlet red when she realized what Marika was making her say in public. "Marika!"

"And you probably even lied when you said you love me, every night..." Marika was not a gifted actress but she knew a few tricks. Squeezing her eyes shut so hard it almost hurt, she could force a few tears. "So it's all lies?"

Their audience was starting to boo Chiaki, calling her horrible and a liar. Even the villagers, who had realized that the pirates were no threat to them as long as they didn't start a fight, were joining in on it. And it worked almost too well.

"I didn't lie about any of those things! Stop making a fuss Marika!" Grabbing her captain by her right wrist, Chiaki felt instantly pissed off when Marika stumbled forward and fell to the ground.

"Brute!" "How can you do that to your wife?!" "What kind of girl pushes their girlfriend around like that?!" The audience was getting rowdy now.

"I-" Chiaki couldn't take it any longer. "I don't care anymore!" Quickly walking off, stomping almost, Chiaki's face lit up even more when everyone was giving her dirty looks.

Meanwhile, Marika smirked as wide as the horizon and sat down on the bench again, grabbing another mug. "Finally, a drink for-" The mug exploded in her hands, leaving behind on a mess on the table.

"Did you think I would fall for that, captain?" Chiaki's voice came from right behind her. "No matter how much you embarrass me in public, I'm the discipline, you're the motivation." Nobody but Marika could hear her.

Marika had enough. Jumping up, kicking over the entire table and the bench in the process, she grabbed Chiaki by her upper arm and forced her to the ground. "Now look here… It's been a really annoying day. You're going to let your captain have a damned drink or so I swear on my title, I will throw you into the brig." Marika's smile was cracked all over and she was clearly in control.

"And you're going to spend the night alone then?"

"Chiaki… one damn drink. One beer! You're even allowed to drive after just one beer!"

Freeing herself from Marika's hold in an instant, Chiaki shrugged in a really big way. "Fine. One drink."

"You're worse than Misa." Marika picked the bench up and sat down, away from the mess Chiaki had made with her gun.

"You're not sleeping with Misa." Chiaki sat right next to her. _If she is getting a drink I better make sure it really is just one. She is usually so responsible, but that all goes out the window when alcohol becomes involved. Dad told me that is something that Blaster Ririka was known for as well._

"Maybe I should."

"Is that so? Maybe I should preemptively sleep with her then."

"Not if I get to her first."

"I'll invite Coorie to my room then."

"Hey!" Marika stared at Chiaki by her side, who was averting her face just enough to appear cold without completely looking away and willfully ignoring her captain. "Chiaki!"

Up on the ship, Misa and Coorie had been listening to their captain and second in command. "Those two either don't realize they're still on open channels or they don't care." Misa was covering her forehead with her hand. "Our captain is a great woman, but sometimes..."

"They're joking, right?" Coorie was not so convinced that they were. "The captain and Chiaki are hot but I don't want to get dragged into their mess."

"They're just pulling each other's leg. I think it's their way of winding down before a big job." Misa waved her hand and yawned for a moment. "Marika is probably riled up because today was one serious situation after another each turning out to be nothing."

"And Chiaki?"

"She's Marika's outlet. She probably picked a fight on purpose to make Marika blow off steam."

"We're probably the only pirates in space that have a captain and vice-captain like this."

"With their relationship, probably."

" **You** didn't seem surprised when the captain just came out and introduced Chiaki as her girlfriend."

"I have an eye for people. I'm just glad the two princesses from Serenity got a clue and didn't pursue Marika."

"Eh? You're kidding. Those two shorties?"

"Marika is quite the womanizer."

"That probably wouldn't have ended well."

"That is exactly why we have such good relations to Serenity though."

Coorie grabbed a handful of chips and had them vanish into her black hole of a mouth. "Misa."

"Hm?"

"They **are** kidding about you and me, right?"

"They are. Marika and Chiaki are practically a married couple. They're just using us as bargaining chips to make each other mad." _It's a different story if Marika is drunk, though. Well, Coorie knows not to open the door when Marika's drunk. Chiaki always makes sure to take away her owner's ring when she starts drinking._ "Just ignore them." Activating a channel so she could talk to her captain, Misa took a deep breath. "Captain. How much longer are you going to fool around down there? Aren't we on the clock?"

"One more drink!" Marika sounded a little drunk already.

"The original agreement you made with Chiaki was **one** drink and it's been at least five or six based on what you sound like. Unless you want to call the mission off we need our captain up here." Hanging up on Marika, Misa looked at the captain's terminal and checked the time. They were still ahead of schedule but letting Marika get drunk was really a bad idea. _I'm glad Chiaki keeps her under control. She stopped letting me talk her into and out of things a while back._

Down on the planet, Marika was putting on a performance. "What kind of soldier are you losers? Leaving your ship while on duty and getting wasted here? You are worse than pirates! Where's your sense of duty?! Where's your sense of loyalty!"

"I don't think loyalty has anything to do with-" The soldier turned pale. A large caliber rifle shot just went past his right ear.

Marika stopped in front of them, repeatedly tapping her rifle on her shoulder, looking down at the soldier like he was some sort of insect. "Chiaki, I thought I heard someone talk back to me. Like, right here. You hear anything?"

"What do pirates want here? There is nothing valuable to get." One of the soldiers, his uniform was slightly more fancy than that of the others, raised his voice, proving to have some guts.

"I came here looking for a fight and I ain't got one because you lazy bums are just drinking in bright day and getting shitfaced!" Marika kicked the soldier from before in the chest and made him fall over backwards. "What the hell is wrong with the Stellar Alliance military, seriously?!"

"Ah, it's started. The drunken rampage." Chiaki just made things up on the fly now. "When she gets like that, say the wrong thing and boom, you'll be a head shorter. Figuratively." That comment put some visible fear in most of the soldiers.

"Spare my crew. I approved their trip to this planet. Even though we have been stationed out here for three months already, there is no excuse." Fancy uniform was asking for mercy. "You can kill me if you want. The alliance does not negotiate with pirates so asking for a ransom for a lowly captain like myself will prove useless."

 _He has guts._ "So you think you alone can make up for all my disappointment?" Marika walked over to fancy uniform and stared him down. He has a bit of a beard, a light brown and he was definitely a bit over middle aged. "I am not going to let you morons off that easily. But the Bentenmaru doesn't engage in pointless slaughter."

"Bentenmaru?" "She said Bentenmaru." "Isn't that…?" "Is that Miniskirt Marika?" "She looks hotter than I thought." "I heard that if you beg for your life she will leave you alone." "I heard that too."

Marika almost broke out in laughter when over forty soldiers suddenly threw their faces to the ground, foreheads touching the dirt, shouting in unison. "Please spare just our lives!"

 _That's some reputation I built up._ _But that makes things easier._ "Just your lives? Hah! Ha ha ha! Do you fools know what that means?! I will take your money, your valuables, everything you have including the clothes on your back and your ship! And of course that isn't enough. I'm gonna take the goodwill of the villagers from you too! Hey!" Marika shouted in the general direction of where the mercenaries had sat down to have a drink of their own. "Find every single communicator, everything that can be used to call the next village or off world and grab it!"

Chiaki sent a look Marika's ways that spoke volumes. _You're putting it on kinda thick there_.

Ten minutes later there were a lot of soldiers in just their underwear – a bunch of them had been women too and those were not spared either – and every means of communicating had been collected. Marika had been successfully prevented from any more drinking by Chiaki and they were now loading everything into the shuttle.

"I always thought pirates would be scarier. Raping the women, setting buildings on fire, killing everyone, like that." One of the older women from the village was thinking out loud.

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

"I don't like the Stellar Alliance uniform." Marika turned on the spot, looking over her own shoulder.

The uniform of the SA was in pure white with a simple four pronged star shape on the back. The rims were thin and evenly black across all four limbs. The uniform was accompanied by cheap combat boots in a light brown color and gloves of the same manner. The slightly fancier captain's uniform had black lining across the arms and legs and an additional four pronged star just below the left collar bone. "It's boring. And it has no style."

"Even your high school uniform was more varied than this." Chiaki wore the same uniform and sat on the bed they shared. "This is a risky plan, Marika. Once we are in it won't be easy to get out. There is going to be fighting everywhere. Lots of people are going to die."

"They're outlaws and military. They signed up knowing this could happen. What I can't stand is pointless murder. In this case all three parties involved kind of have this coming for them." Marika justified things in her own way. "Things will go to hell unless we bring all three of them down. I have no delusions about being able to deal with the entire fleet of both the NGE and the SA."

"Blowing up frontier base ten is gonna make us famous. Or would, if we'd let anyone know." Chiaki noticed the light twitch in Marika's shoulders. "I know we can't tell anyone, no need to explain it to me. I'm your wife after all." Saying it with more sarcasm than necessary, Chiaki sounded upset.

"Are you still mad about that?" Marika turned about to face her girlfriend and sat on the bed by her side. "You were having a lot of fun teasing me about a few beers, too."

"It's my job to do that." Chiaki leaned away from Marika. "You reek of booze."

"Oh come on, I didn't have that much! Don't be a wimp!"

"Who the hell's a wimp!?" Chiaki turned back to face Marika and was immediately pushed down, a slightly acidic kiss starting from there. It didn't last long. The captain was quickly pushed off and started to sulk over that. Sitting straight up, Chiaki sighed and clicked her tongue. "Come here." Putting her legs together and patting her thighs, Chiaki invited her captain to partake in a rare lap pillow.

Lying down without hesitation, Marika groaned a little. "I told Coorie to give word when it's go time. Subspace info is trickling in already, so far the NGE and the FF10 are just staring each other down and shouting threats at each other."

"So we're just waiting on word from the Stellar Alliance headquarters?" Chiaki picked up a comb from the night desk and started to brush Marika's hair since she almost never did it herself.

"We have full control of the _Silver_ _Indigo_ so we'll know when they get a transmission. The story we're going with is that we're the reserve crew after most of the main crew including the captain died in a pirate attack. We spaced the pirates after learning about the frontier attack. That's why we're down to what we have on board now."

"The mercenaries?" Chiaki tapped the wooden side of the brush against Marika's scalp twice which caused the captain to turn over. The brushing continued on the other side.

"Not paid to go on a crazy mission like that. A transport from Shadow Jane will pick them up within the hour." Marika enjoyed the brushing. She could do it herself but after she hadn't done it for a few days when things had been really busy, Chiaki did it for her and it was rare to see her so affectionate.

"Big waste of money that turned out to be." Chiaki found a particularly disobedient strand of hair and needed to use her fingers to split it apart for proper brushing.

"Don't say it. I can already hear Misa and Hyakume tanning my hide after we're done with this job."

"Tanning the captain's hide sounds like mutiny."

"No mutiny jokes."

"Any idea what you are going to do if we do get that super engine running?" Chiaki didn't need to add anything like _if we make it through this in one piece._ There was no point in being pessimistic, she'd learned that from Marika.

"Rob a ton of people and get filthy rich. Set up base somewhere and live the dream of a pirate's life. Go out, plunder, save the day for a few innocents maybe and make life difficult for the military morons. Then come back to base, get greeted by my wife and- **ow! What?!** " Marika covered the top of her head with her hands after Chiaki punched her there.

"First of all, I am not your wife. **Secondly** , why is it that in your fantasy I am staying behind on base instead of going out with you?" Chiaki was both angry and embarrassed at the same time.

"It's a fantasy! I was just thinking out loud! No need to hit me. And with a fist! Not even my mom ever hit me! **With a fist no less**!"

"No need to say it twice." Chiaki looked away and was somehow embarrassed that Marika just stayed there, head on her lap, despite the attack. "I do think it's a nice fantasy. Other than marooning me at base."

"Maybe I'll marry someone less violent!"

"Like Misa? Can you imagine how much she'd nag you about your diet, exercise and everything if you married her?"

The captain's entire body rocketed with shivers. "Spare me."

"Coorie would get crumbs all over the bed."

"I don't think I would marry her unless she dresses up."

"You are such a lewd beast, captain."

"I don't enjoy the messy and geek glasses look! Everyone has their preferences!"

"So what are **your** preferences, oh captain?"

"A headstrong girl."

"Isn't that about yourself?"

"What? Chiaki-chan, you're way more headstrong than me!"

"I am not sure I like the way you're putting that." Pinching Marika's nose, Chiaki looked a bit miffed about that _compliment_ of sorts. "And don't call me Chiaki-chan!"

"What about _my beloved Chiaki_ then?"

"Rejected."

"Love of my life?"

"Marika."

"All right, all right. Enough messing around." Rising up from her lap pillow, Marika exhaled in an exaggerated manner, stretched her arms over her head and rotated her shoulders. "It's been a while since we stuck it to the NGE this hard. I'm counting on you to have my back."

"You don't even need to say that, captain."

"There isn't a better first mate that I could ask for." Jumping off the bed, Marika checked the gear that she left on the table. "In case they ask us to leave the Indigo behind you know what to do."

"Considering how well everything has gone for us it is about time that something went wrong."

"No jinxing us."

"You know I am a realist."

"Still no jinxing us."

"It's a pity we can't bring Schnitzer."

"All androids in the SA military have specific designations. Not even Coorie has enough access to falsify their database for us. And showing up with no designation is gonna cause a lot of unwanted questions and trouble." Swinging a large knife around, Marika turned on the spot and kicked the air at face height. She wasn't nearly the combat expert Schnitzer was, never would be, but after Chiaki had beaten her ten out of ten times in practice matches she had taken some lessons.

"You don't have to explain this to me. I stood next to you when Coorie explained it to **you**."

Marika paused what she was doing and put the knife back on the table. "It's okay to be nervous, Chiaki."

"I'm not nervous!"

"Hm… I am."

Chiaki blushed. It would be humiliating to admit that she was nervous now. And Marika knew that. "You cheat."

Marika smirked wide, touched her palm between her collarbones and bowed slightly. "Pirate."

" _We lie, we drink, we take what isn't ours and we are the biggest pain in your back you have ever known! There ain't a safe we can't crack, there ain't no ship we can't seize and there sure as hell's no one that's safe from us! Haven't you heard? We run circles around the law like they're idiots!_ " Chiaki finished her imitation of Marika's great speech from a while back that had made it all the way to the big networks and public broadcast as a warning about pirates.

The woman in question was hiding her face behind her hands. "Stop. Don't. No more." She glanced through a gap between her fingers. "Is that what you thought I'd say?!" Leaping across the room, Marika pushed Chiaki down on the bed. " _You lot! Take everything they got! Spare nothing and no one who resists!_ " Imitating her girlfriend's follow up, which ended up as a much used sound byte on radios and such, Marika caused Chiaki's face to almost melt.

"Shut up! You were the one that made me say it!"

Swooning with closed eyes and a big, fat grin on her face, Marika chuckled. "You looked so cool then. I'm a little disappointed you don't use eyeliner more often."

"It's a huge pain to put on in a hurry and who cares if I look pretty when we rob people? I doubt they'd hand over their weapons just because I got make up on!" Chiaki wished she could disappear on the spot. _I can never, ever, tell her that I tried to put the eyeliner on myself and made a huge mess and had to ask Misa for help. Never! I'll die first!_

"Really? The great Chiaki-chan isn't confident in her make up skills?"

"Excuse me for not being a typical wife!"

"You just called yourself my wife." Marika saw the nervous twitch of her girlfriend's left brow and let her go. Sitting up on top of the bed, she changed modes to more serious again. "You're the only one who I can play around with like this."

"What about the sailing club members?"

"I'm their captain. It's only because you're both the Bentenmaru's first mate and an accomplished pirate yourself that I can get away with treating you affectionately like this. I might be a pirate but if I picked some random girl as my girlfriend it would hurt the way everyone else respects me. So I'm glad you grew up to be a really great pirate yourself."

"Nice save."

"I know it sounded like I only picked you as my girlfriend because you were the only option. But I always liked you. Or did you think I would have made such an effort when we both went to high school to be close to you?"

"You could be pretty annoying, you know."

"Heheheh." Marika looked distinctly proud of herself.

Chiaki's lips parted and words seemed to want to come out but nothing emerged for a few long seconds. "I think it should be almost go time, captain."

"After we pull this off we are going on vacation. Some vacation planet! Like _Sea of the Evening Star_!"

"You just want to ogle me in a bikini."

"Competition style is fine too!"

"Sometimes I wonder if only the pirate captain bit of you grew up and the rest is stuck in puberty."

"That's hurtful!"

"Captain." A different voice said this.

"I know, I know." Marika replied as if it had been Chiaki. "I'll promise not to ogle too-" Finally it clicked that someone else was talking to her. Looking to the door, over her shoulder, she saw Misa, dressed in the same Stellar Alliance uniform that Chiaki was wearing. She looked really good in it. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Right after Chiaki here complained about not being a typical wife." Misa looked somewhat smug about that fact.

Both the captain and the first mate turned red and got off the bed. "Is it go time?" Marika didn't feel like she could exert any kind of commanding aura.

"Not yet." Misa crossed her arms and leaned against the closed door. "But I suspected that our dear captain was preventing Chiaki from preparing properly so I came to check on things."

"I was doing no such thing!"

" _You're the only one with who I can play around with like this._ " Misa deliberately tried to sound like Marika. And again she caused both of them to blush. _Even after all this time she is still weak when it comes to these things._

"I stand by that!" Marika fought through her embarrassment and stepped forward. "We're still kinda young so I haven't asked her to marry me yet!"

"You're gonna ask me?" Chiaki was able to ask this with a straight face. "To marry you?" Not because she was unfazed by it. No. Not at all. It was because she didn't have the mental capacity to process this at such short notice.

"Someday!" Marika clenched her fists and raised them in front of her chest. "Kato Chiaki!"

"What are you gonna do about an heir?" The question came surprisingly enough from Chiaki and not Misa.

Marika just blinked a few times and then tilted her head. "We'll have a kid, what else?"

"Okay, okay, enough future planning. I need both of you sharp and ready to do pirate things. Let's not get anyone killed because you're thinking about marriage and kids."

"Who do you think you're talking to Misa?" Marika was beaming from one cheek to the other. "I'm Kato Marika, captain of the Bentenmaru, one of the original seven."

The beam vanished within a shadow that was cast over Marika's face as she got off the bed and returned once more to the table that carried her gear. "We're setting out to kill hundreds, maybe thousands or even tens of thousands of people depending on how bad things derail from my intent. Even in the best case scenario, there are going to be people that will lose their life. I don't know their names and I never will. I don't know their faces and I don't need to. This is the life they chose and that I chose. This is the danger that you sign up for when you operate outside the law. Pirates are pirates once more and not just entertainers for the rich. We're not just glorified treasure hunters and bounty hunters. I can't say this is what I was looking for when I took up the mantle of captain on the Bentenmaru but it is what I live for now. To protect my crew. To protect those that are just numbers on a sheet when those that exist in our world go too wild. To take, rob, plunder and have a fire burning in my chest." Flinging around, Marika bore no resemblance to the carefree woman that had been fooling around just a couple minutes ago. Her face looked like it could put the fear of god into those that were on the far ends of the spectrum of law.

A few seconds passed before Misa slowly clapped for her captain. "Pity that you weren't on the bridge. Everyone enjoys your speeches, captain."

"They've heard a hundred speeches before this. One won't be missed." Marika ended up giving a lot of speeches, but not by intention. It was just that over the years she had gotten pretty good at understanding what raised and crushed morale. And she was pretty good at both.

Misa's focus drifted off for a moment. "Coorie is asking what's the hold up. She's expecting the go signal to come in any second now." Misa watched both of them hurry to finish their own preparations each. _Like clockwork. Or well functioning gears rather._

The bridge had everyone but the reserves, and Schnitzer, in Stellar Alliance uniforms. Luca was particularly unhappy with it and still fighting with Kane over her eye-patch. Coorie was also unhappy because she couldn't look her usual geeky self. There was a certain professional look expected from soldiers in the SA and EM specialist or not she had to look the part. Hyakume, Kane and San-Daime had all donned the uniform as well. Luckily none of them had more than a stubble sized beard so there was no need to shave them.

The former Hakuoh students that now served on the Bentenmaru were already waiting to take over for their teachers. Ai would take the helm, Yayoi oversee the engines, and Sasha would handle navigation. For lack of a purpose in the mission, Maki the cook was also staying behind. It was the bare minimum to fly around. In the end, the crew would need to actually get out of Frontier Fortress 10, so the Bentenmaru couldn't just be kept afloat somewhere in space. Not to mention that it would be a little unusual to have so many women on board. It would already be hard to pass the questions of why five of the eight that boarded were women.

But luckily, for as long as they were on the Silver Indigo, the SA vessel they had stolen, they could say that their visual channels were all damaged – in case of a scan, San-Daime would make sure that even said scan would show that to be the truth.

"Schnitzer, while we are gone I trust you to keep everyone safe." Marika was giving some last minute comments.

"You can count on me, captain."

"Sasha, Ai, Yayoi, I don't want to hear about any insubordination from him later or you'll spend two weeks on the Forest of Glowworm. On the dark side."

The three girls turned a shade of horrified that was seldom seen among pirates. That planet was a particularly nasty one with half of it in perpetual day and the other in perpetual night. It was tidally locked to the sun it circled. And it was basically one big forest full of bigger than average bugs and such. Centipedes that were three meters long and as thick as a brick. Harmless but unbelievably disgusting for the girls.

"Aye, captain!" There would not even be a hint of not listening to Schnitzer, they all promised themselves.

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

"This is SA-26F201, Dreadnought _Taurus_. I speak on behalf of Admiral Gran Velt, SA ID A92DH22."

The Bentenmaru crew had boarded the captured vessel and made themselves at home on the bridge. After some initial problems with the consoles and identification, problems that Coorie made short work of, they had gotten the ship up and running with their eight people total. Marika was sitting in the captain's seat while Misa was handling communications. Everyone was at their usual station – Chiaki covered weapons instead of the absent Schnitzer.

The bridge was shaped like a cube, a stark contrast to the arrow shaped bridge of the Bentenmaru. It was reminiscent of the bridge of the solar sailer that Marika had been on years and years ago. Engines and radar were behind the captain while navigation, steering and weapons were in front, with the captain in the center of the room. All of it was on even level, with only the captain's chair lightly elevated above it.

"This is SA199A2883, Destroyer _Silver Indigo_. We received you loud and clear, _Taurus_." Misa spoke as dryly as possible, trying to sound like someone that was just tired beyond belief.

"We understand there was an incident that led to your report to HQ about the unclaimed city state designation FF10." The other end of the line was that of at least a middle aged man that sounded just as tired as Misa was pretending to be.

"We were attacked by pirates. Most of the crew has perished. Officer Mika Chalnel is currently the acting captain, SA ID O0088LA6."

"ID confirmed. Am I speaking with the captain?"

"I am private Marshie Ortega, SA ID P08P177S. I have succeeded the previous communications officer in his duties for the time being. Do you wish to speak with the captain?"

"Please."

Misa pressed a few buttons on the mostly holographic console and the audio window closed in front of her and re-appeared by Marika's chair. "This is Captain Mika Chalnel speaking." Marika faked a much deeper voice than she usually had. She was a well known pirate and her voice was therefore also rather well known. She sounded even deeper than her mother did.

"To confirm, the pirates that attacked you possessed intelligence that the New Galactic Empire is attempting to seize Frontier Fortress 10?"

"Correct. The pirates used this information to bargain for a reduced sentence after we locked them up. They later staged an uprising with the surviving members which resulted in numerous casualties on both sides. No pirates survived."

"How did you confirm the information?"

"As was explained in my report, the pirates possessed a subspace communicator that picked up one-way chatter from other pirates that individually confirmed the event to be taking place." Marika felt her tongue and mind dry out. It was really bothersome to talk all military-like.

"The admiral is changing your orders, acting captain Chalnel. The _Silver Indigo_ is to assist in the raid on the fortress and aid the rest of the alliance in thwarting the ambitions of the NGE as well as secure the fortress for the alliance."

"My vessel has taken light to severe damage in various areas. We held position until now to await further orders and handle emergency repairs. It will be difficult to utilize weapon systems with our current crew. There is no telling how long the patched up systems will hold, either."

The voice on the other end changed its tone. "Do what you can, _Indigo_. We are all grateful for your sacrifice and effort in reporting this development to headquarters. To speak frankly, we have mobilized everyone within effective range of the fortress. Should the time come, we are counting on you to serve the alliance dutifully to the end."

Marika hit the mute button. "They're basically telling us to go, fight and die. They probably don't want to deal with the aftermath of a bunch of low level soldiers commanding a ship. If we all die in battle, some admiral gets to take all the credit."

"That's how I expected this to go." Misa just shrugged it off. "It plays to our advantage."

"It's funny they didn't even try for a visual channel first. I guess they don't want to know the faces of the people they're telling to go die for their sake." Marika said this with a smile but was quite mad on the inside. Turning the sound back on, Marika planned to end the conversation quickly. "We understand our duty to the alliance. Chalnel out." Cutting the line, Marika crossed her legs for a moment before she got up. She didn't really feel at home wearing the Stellar Alliance uniform. "Coorie, did they scan us at all?"

"Nope. They seem to be fairly trusting folks. The personal data was a little bit well encrypted so I guess they're not really expecting pirates to pose as SA military." Coorie had bound her long hair into a clean ponytail and was wearing her usual getup for when she went out to buy things. While the men were clearly happy with that, she couldn't wait to go back to her normal look.

"Keep an eye on it. Hyakume, anything on sensors or radar about them sending someone over?" Marika wanted to be absolutely sure that there would be no problems before she gave her next order.

"Not even a pebble. It's almost insulting how bad their security is." Hyakume looked sort of bored with himself.

"They don't have the time to be inquisitive about things. The NGE got the jump on them regarding the frontier base so they are hurrying to get there before it's too late." Chiaki knew that they too, the Bentenmaru pirates, were hurrying to get there. But not without a plan.

"Chiaki is right. Luca, go ahead and plot a course that sets us down about one to two million kilometers away from the flight chart that they are going to send over. We can blame an engine malfunction if they get noisy about it." Marika walked in a circle around the bridge, trying to get used to the uniform. A futile endeavor.

"I still think this is a really reckless plan, captain." Kane tried to be a voice of reason but he was simply overruled through silence.

Waiting in silence for a little over five minutes, the ship received a flight plan – coordinates and engine output variables. That was the turning point that Marika had waited for. "Luca, how long is it going to take us?"

"Six hours, forty minutes." Luca was even more curt than usual because she was unhappy about the way she had to dress.

"Everyone get some rest while you can. Don't get rid of your uniform, even if you hate it. We're gonna be in the middle of a three way fire fight and I'd like at least one side to not shoot at us." There was more to the costume party than just being able to pass as soldiers should the Stellar Alliance send someone to inspect the vessel or take control. "Coorie, make a complete copy of the ship's database and then rig it to wipe itself clean when we get off."

"No problem." Coorie was glad that at least she would have something to do. SA vessel quarters were not exactly the most comfortable thing, so getting some rest didn't sound all that enticing.

"San-Daime, about the shields-" Marika felt amused when the man knew exactly what she was going to say.

"Already on it. We're going to be a really fast and sturdy chunk of metal, but that's the goal anyway."

"Everyone that opts out of getting some rest because they already slept for hours before we got here – there's bound to be some valuable stuff on board. Weapons, uniforms, IDs, logs – grab everything you can and bring it to the hangar. Luca, Kane. We might have some engine trouble that drops us out of FTL on the way there."

Kane smiled wide upon hearing that. "Yo captain, it's alright if we go wild, yeah?"

"As long as you leave the hull in one piece, anything is fair game." Marika knew that this was not exactly responsible but after they were done with the ship it wouldn't see much use anyway, no matter what.

Marika was the first that was off the bridge and Chiaki was right behind her – they wouldn't need weapons in FTL after all. "With things like this we could have brought Schnitzer anyway." Chiaki was following Marika through a particularly long hallway.

"There is a lot of potential trouble." Marika wanted the operation to go off without too many hitches. "And I wanted one of the old crew to stay on the Bentenmaru."

"You don't trust Sasha and the others?"

"I trust them. I just don't want them to run into trouble and panic because they're all on their own. Schnitzer looks intimidating and he's basically a one-man squad when it comes to a fight."

"So you were looking out for them."

"That's my job."

"What about looking out for the rest of us?"

"You lot can handle yourself or I wouldn't have come up with a plan like this."

"It's a crazy plan."

"See, that's why it's gonna work."

"It's a pity the place is too big for us to take it as our base."

"We'd need an armada to defend it. Even if we enlisted all the pirates we're on good terms with that wouldn't be nearly enough."

"They're defending the place right now without one, right?"

"Kinda. They do have enough people to use all those cannons they got. Automated self-defense only goes so far. Any real attempts from the SA or NGE and we'd be right out of a base. Not to mention that a pirate base is supposed to be hidden, you know."

"You really just love the idea of a hidden base, don't you?"

"It's very pirate like and cool, right?" Finally arriving at her destination, Marika opened up the captain's quarters and had a look inside. It was a lot more spartan than she expected. A bed, a desk with a chair, a small table with two chairs. That was pretty much it. "Makes me wonder if they are building these with the intent to frustrate any pirates that get a hold of the ship."

"I doubt it. They're just mass produced and cheap." Chiaki sat by the table that had nothing on it. "The walls are white, the floor is white, the furniture's white… they're really trying hard to have the most boring color scheme in the universe for their ships."

"You can say that again."

"The-"

"I didn't mean you **should** -"

"Wasn't going to." Chiaki put her elbow on the round table and propped her chin on her palm. "I was gonna say there's not gonna be much of value in this space traveling white box."

"I was wondering if you were gonna call it a coffin."

"I don't plan on any of us dying in this thing."

"Very good!" Marika chuckled and sat at the table with Chiaki. "Wanna do it? I think the sheets are actually clean."

"I've no idea what you just said." Chiaki turned to face the other way. "It did sound like my captain just said something really stupid though."

"Wow, that's rude! I'll throw you in the brig!"

"And sleep alone?"

"My perfect plan, foiled by a technicality."

"You really joke around a lot right before we jump into danger."

Marika hummed and leaned back in her chair, put her feet on the table and them hummed again, this time much longer than before. "Is that bad?"

"I didn't say that."

"So?"

"So what?"

"If it isn't bad, then what?"

"Annoying."

"That's totally bad, isn't it!" Marika just laughed heartily at that response. "So what do you wanna do? Search around the ship for valuables?"

"We already did that when we first took the ship. The only stuff left is gonna be in the walls. Components and what not." Chiaki faced Marika again. "Are you sure you shouldn't get some sleep of your own?"

"That doesn't sound bad but I can't sleep without my very own pillow."

"You mean me, don't you?" _It's not like I have anything better to do. I'm not that good at knowing what components are valuable and which aren't, so there's no point in me prying open the walls and rip out stuff. And this way I can at least make sure Marika isn't an exhausted wreck when we get there._ "All right."

"Really?" Marika looked at Chiaki a little strange. _I didn't think she would actually let me. Score!_ "Are you sure?"

"Someone has to watch out for our captain so she isn't a sleep deprived, nervous wreck when we get there."

"How thoughtful." Marika took her feet off the table and jumped to her feet. "But sleeping in this?" Spreading her arms and looking down on herself, Marika was very dissatisfied. "We brought a change of clothes but changing is a pain."

"You say that about everything when we're alone. Changing is a pain. Showering is a pain. Eating is a pain. Everything being a pain is a pain."

"I do not use that last one." Marika walked over to the bed, which was not exactly two people sized, and laid down. Waving her hand as if she was attracting a cat, Marika smiled wide to herself when Chiaki actually responded to it. _If only I could get her to wear some cat ears and say_ _ **meow**_ _or something_.

Sitting down by Marika's side, Chiaki took off the standard issue boots that were part of the uniform and got comfortable on the bed. Patting her lap, it was incredibly obvious what Chiaki was going for. Her plan went up in smoke just a moment later – Marika tackled her, pushing her down on the hard mattress and rested her forehead against Chiaki's cheek.

"This isn't what I had in mind." _But she knows that. I bet that is why she is doing it in the first place_.

"Don't be such a party pooper, Chiaki-chan."

"How many more thousands of times do I have to tell you to not call me that?"

"Always once more."

"You love riling me up, don't you?"

"I can tell when something makes you really angry and when you're just being your usual, Chiaki-chan self."

"Like. I. Said..." Chiaki reached for Marika's butt and pinched it. "Don't call me that."

"You can call me Marika-chan if you want!"

"Who would want that!" Chiaki breathed a heavy sigh. "Just go to sleep. I'm sure Coorie or Kane or Misa are going to kick us out of bed soon enough."

"You'll make a fine captain if anything ever happens to me."

"I'll make a fine dead person if anything ever happens to you because I'll be right there and it'll happen to me too."

"Until death does us part."

"Misa is gonna lynch you if she catches you with the marriage talk in the middle of a mission."

"Misa can't touch me. I'm the captain."

"Even the captain is subject to the orders of the ship doctor."

"Eh…?" Marika sounded genuinely unsettled. "That's just in medical matters, right?"

"And you think Misa wouldn't find a way to make this a medical matter?" There was a moment of silence. And then, without warning, Marika pretended to be asleep, snoring. _Even though I know she doesn't snore._

Leaving Marika to her pretense, Chiaki just closed her eyes. _This plan is crazy. But I can't say it is the craziest thing we've done yet. Crap… now_ _ **I'm**_ _getting sleepy._ Glancing at Marika, seeing her closed eyes, Chiaki noticed that the snoring was gone. _She actually fell asleep pretending to be asleep._ _Maybe I should… just…_ Her thoughts trailed off after being infected by Marika's drowsiness and her eyes closing on her.

Both of them woke up when the ship dropped out of FTL and shook hard enough to make the two lovers fall out of the small bed. The floor was so hard that they were both wide awake from the impact of landing. "Damn it Kane… couldn't you make the touchdown a little smoother?" Marika had hit the back of her head and was rubbing a spot that would probably become a bump.

"Captain, Chiaki, we're within our target range of the frontier fortress." Misa sounded a lot more serious than she did usually. "Everyone is ready."

Marika didn't waste any time and jumped to her feet, fixing her uniform as she stumbled towards the door. "Chiaki."

Her second in command had already put on her boots and was coming after her. "I know."

Hurrying to the bridge, Coorie had put their surroundings and the distant view of the dwarf planet on a big screen. Marika only gave every member a cursory glance. San-Daime was tired. Hyakume was covered in grease or something similar. Luca was in work mode. Misa and Kane were focusing on the screen. Coorie was glued to her own screen. "2.185 million kilometers from the fortress. There are several other alliance vessels nearby. The NGE has apparently already started their attack. Here we go. SA military channel, looping message." Reading it in an instant, Coorie gave a summarized version to her captain. "They're telling us that we're going to launch a coordinated attack in forty minutes and we should remain on combat readiness until then."

"Screw that." Marika sounded enthusiastic about that. "Kane, Coorie, San-Daime, things are all set up, right?" The captain received confirmation from all three of her subordinates at the same time. "Time to suit up, everyone."

"I still hate this plan, captain." Kane bemoaned it one more time as he headed towards the exit.

Despite being the last to leave the bridge, Marika was the first in the hangar. Now, every minute, every second was valuable. Squeezing herself into the completely unremarkable white spacesuit, Marika watched her crew do the same, one by one. "Everyone ready?!"

"Heck no!" San-Daime was not too enthusiastic about this plan either. "But you're the boss!"

"Everyone just follow Chiaki's lead and we'll be fine!" Marika tried to find some comforting words and caused everyone to look at the only one of them that was already finished with putting on her spacesuit.

"Enough of your jokes, captain." Chiaki snatched Marika's helmet from her hands and pushed it down on her.

"You're all veteran pirates! Something like this ought not to make you piss your pants!" Marika's voice came from inside the helmet now, slightly muffled. Adjusting the suit and then sealing it up, Marika turned on her communication device and limited it to just the other seven that Coorie had programmed in. "Everyone here me?" Marika waited for seven thumbs up signs before she continued. "You all know the plan. This will be one hell of a ride and for those three idiot parties out there it'll the worst day of their lives! Nobody screws with our part of space without our permission! And they damn well don't have it! So what are we gonna do? We deal with it like pirates! We come in, unwanted! We start causing a ruckus, recklessly! And we take off, taking everything we want and leaving behind chaos and a lot of sour, stuck up people! This isn't some sabotage, some salvage, adventure or treasure hunt mission! We're here to steal that base right out from under their asses and we're damn good pirates so this will go off without a hitch!"

Marika slammed her fist onto the big red button that was right by her side and the primary lights went out while a bunch of red, flickering ones came on. "Everyone hook up!"

Attaching themselves to the massive iron bars at the side of the hangar with a special carbon fiber rope that could withstand several metric tons of pressure, the crew secured itself. After that they turned on their magnetic boots. And then Marika hit the red button a second time. The hangar door was slammed shut automatically while the far end of the room opened up, exposing the interior to space.

All eight of them were sucked towards space, their ropes stopping them just short of the exit. And then the pull ceased. The air had been vented from the room and now gravity was off. Turning on their magnetic boots and using their backpacks to maneuver to the floor, they returned to the side bar and unhooked the rope. They would still need that. Passing through the opening into empty space, they walked alongside the ship's white surface.

Standing on the bottom of the hull, in what could be described as upside down if space had _up_ or _down_ , the crew of the Bentenmaru circled around Coorie, who had a small tablet in her hands. "On your sign, captain."

"Everyone hook in!" Marika shouted her order and immediately received a tap from Chiaki against the back of her helmet.

"We can hear you inside our helmets. What are you shouting at us for?"

"You're ruining the moment, Chiaki-chan," Marika said this with a sigh following her words.

"Don't-" Chiaki swallowed her words. _Not is not the same to mess around with her_.

Despite most people's assumptions, a ships hull was far from a singular, smooth surface. There were hundreds of nooks and crannies and all sorts of opportunities to fasten a rope to. "Everyone secure?" They were spaced a little bit apart – about two meters per person, and one by one they showed a thumbs up again. "Coorie, launch." Marika didn't wait any longer.

A small explosion occurred at the back of the _Silver Indigo_ and the ship started to pick up speed instead of holding position. The engines were firing at capacity and within a minute they were flying past the other SA vessels.

The plan was simple. Rig the ship's engine to overheat and explode after a while, use the generated propulsion to make the ship fly right through the opponent's fleet, causing the remaining SA vessels to be forced into action early and causing a huge amount of chaos on all sides.

Of course, being on the outside, or inside, of a ship that was rigged to explode was dangerous. Being outside while some overly zealous and quick witted NGE captain could be firing at them was also dangerous. And most of all, it was dangerous to be on a ship that would ram front first into a huge wall of rock and metal. But that was what being a pirate was all about! Facing danger and coming out up ahead!

To an outsider, the ship appeared to be out of control. No sensors, no radar, no weapons, just the engine roaring at full power and minuscule explosions occurring all over the ship. Nobody thought to take a second look at the belly of the ship. Nobody saw that there were eight human shaped white objects on it, standing and facing the rapidly closer coming fortress and NGE ships.

With the _Silver Indigo_ rushing in, lots of not so experienced Stellar Alliance captains saw the brave charge and followed suit, causing even the more veteran captains to follow, else they'd be left behind. Without coordination, without a clear goal the Stellar Alliance headed towards the New Galactic Empire fleet.

And just as the SA was confused and unorganized, the NGE didn't fare any better. Everyone just shouted at everyone else for orders, demanding explanations why some SA vessel was on direct collision course with the frontier fortress and where all those enemy ships had come from all of a sudden.

Both military fleets wouldn't send their elite troops this far out, not even for a big mission like this. Those were needed in much more valuable sectors. So the extreme audacity of the _Silver Indigo_ was causing the chain of command on both sides to crumble. Numbers alone was working to the advantage of the pirates and against both the SA and NGE.

"Everyone ready to jump! On my sign!" Marika didn't have a countdown running on the inside of her helmet or anything like that. She only had her experience and gut feeling to count on. That and Coorie's and Misa's advice and calculations. After being accelerated so much they needed time and space, distance, to slow themselves down or they would turn into red splashes on the planet surface. A dwarf planet had no atmosphere so it was really just one gigantic rock with a little bit of gravity.

Standing on the hull, all eight of them had their hands on the button that would cut the rope from the hull. Their magnetic boots were just a matter of clacking the heels together. It was a crazy plan, they all knew that. But they also trusted in Marika like crazy.

They had passed the far rear of the NGE ships now and the ship was dangerously fast. Alliance vessels could reach some pretty ridiculous sub-light speeds when the engine was really pushed. And this engine was working harder than it ever should.

"Jump!"

Without hesitation, without question, eight ropes were cut at almost the exact same time, magnetic boots were turned off and the ship basically flew right over their heads. In a vacuum they lost no speed naturally, so they had to counteract their velocity somehow. "Everyone activate thrusters!"

Modern spacesuits, especially military ones, came with high power thrusters built into the bag of the suit. Slamming down the handle to fire those thrusters, the crew felt like they were being squeezed by something very big and strong. Velocity was a bitch, even in space.

The eight of them were still slowing down when way up ahead the _Silver Indigo_ crashed right into a large fortress section. A flash of light accompanied the spectacle, followed by a massive explosion that obliterated the ship and also ripped a huge hole into the fortress itself.

In the middle of the empty space between the NGE and the fortress itself were the pirates, slowing down some more, reaching levels which they could manage. If anyone saw them they would just rub their eyes and think they should have gotten a few more hours of sleep, so outlandish was their plan. A slight miscalculation and they'd end up splattered over the rocky walls or drifting forever through space.

But these pirates weren't just run of the mil. "Okay, we're down to approaching speed! Everyone follow me!" Hitting her thrusters and turning about, Marika now fired them again to adjust her course.

There was no way they'd just get in through a port or some hidden access path – how would they even know about the latter? So there was really only one choice. Make an entrance! For that exact purpose Hyakume and San-Daime had brought each a large, secured bag with them, containing just some everyday essentials for piracy.

Landing right next to a cannon that was fifty times the size of a person, the Bentenmaru crew finally had solid ground back under their feet. "Captain, I hope we're never doing that again!" Hyakume was glad to have some tiny bit of gravity affecting him and actual stone under his feet.

"Don't be a wimp, Hyakume." Misa was standing a few meters away, secretly just as relieved as he was. _Our captain got us on this rock in one piece and she screwed over all three sides of this conflict in the process without even telling them that she's here._

"Enough bitching, get working!" Marika walked past Misa and helped Hyakume with his bag. "Remember the plan. Chiaki, I'm counting on you." Talking through the open channel that reached all her crew members, Marika opted out of giving another speech; they didn't have the time.

The plan, so to speak, was simple. Blow a big ass hole into the outer shell of the base, go in and cause a ton of havoc and stir up the pirates. They were the angry kid poking a beehive with a stick. That was stage one.

Placing enough explosives to tear the Bentenmaru in half, the pirates retreated behind the massive cannon – and Marika pushed the button. The explosion was more powerful than expected – a lot more powerful. Tremendously so even.

"San-Daime! Did you mess up the ratios?!" Marika shouted. While explosions in space made no sound, it was human nature to shout when they saw a bomb go off with the power of a small nuclear device.

"We must have hit the storage area for this big ass cannon! The explosion probably ignited the shells or something!" The engineer shouted back.

Stepping out from cover, Marika and her crew witnessed a much larger hole than they had planned to make. And there were several dozen people floating away from the fortress at high speed; pirates, sucked out of the base's containment. Debris was everywhere – ranging from rocks to torn metal objects and even parts of people.

"You could fly a small spaceship in there." Kane quickly distanced himself from the idea. "Not that I'd ever want to."

"Avoid the edges! We're going in before the shutters come down!" _With a hole this size it's questionable if they're going to come down at all, though. This would have blown the Bentenmaru clean in half at the minimum._

Using the low gravity to their advantage, the crew jumped past the horrifically torn edges of the hole and landed inside a room that looked like a disaster zone. It was filled with debris, the artificial gravity was just barely holding on and significantly weakened. "Misa, Luca, Coorie you're with me. Hyakume, San-Daime, Chiaki, Kane you know what to do."

Kane was miffed about Chiaki being in command of the second group instead of him. He still believed himself to be a better shot and fighter than Chiaki was, although the seeds of doubt had been sprouting lately. "We'll see you later, captain."

"Everyone that gets shot is going to go without dessert for a month!" Marika knew exactly what threats worked. Punishing them with food had been **exceptionally** effective ever since she got Maki to come on board as a cook. And although they all laughed at those threats every time, the one time when Kane had gotten punished, he was really suffering. "We're dealing with a three-way scum buffet here. I don't like it but there's no point in holding back. You'll get shot at with the intent to kill so if it moves, shoot it! There's no civilians here, only pirates and military!"

"Aye, aye!" The entire crew answered as one.

While Marika's group, including Misa, Coorie and Luca, was going to cause a lot of tech mayhem and general chaos, the other group that was led by Chiaki, including Hyakume, San-Daime and Kane, had a much more explosive mission – A base that size had to have some pretty powerful power generators running and they were going to blow them up. Chiaki and Kane were essentially bodyguards, just like Misa and Marika. The real work would be done by those that weren't trained to shoot.

"And-" Coorie looked at the gaping hole that had once been the roof of the room. "Shutters won't deploy. The mechanism is toast. If we force open the door to the hallway beyond this door we'll depressurize everything connected to it. We'll get blown out by the pressure on top of that."

"Change of plans." Being able to completely throw out a plan and come up with a new one on the fly was one of Marika's strongest suits. This had been a somewhat recent development that came with accumulating experience of many situations going wrong. "Hyakume, San-Daime, anything left in this room that we can use to blow through the floor?"

"Through the floor?" Hyakume took a quick look around. Between tons of scrap metal, plastic and leftovers of consoles and computers, there wasn't much to work with. "I think that's impossible, captain."

"This room stored all the ammunition for the big cannon outside, right?" Chiaki tried to think for herself in these situations and not leave everything to Marika. "They have to be loading the munition into that cannon somehow and with that size, we should be able to just walk through the barrel."

"That's a great idea, Chiaki." Marika was instantly on board with that.

"Walk through a cannon?!" Kane was a little surprised by that idea. No. He was very surprised. "Isn't that unnecessarily risky?"

"More so than a hyper accelerated space walk?" Chiaki countered the question with a question of her own. "Not to mention, what are they gonna do? Shoot munition they don't have? Even if they **do** have a shell loaded, we'll see that right away and just find another path."

"Misa, go take a look." Marika didn't send Kane or Chiaki because she wanted them to argue on. Arguments often brought about unexpected solutions.

"There is not going to be **any** cover inside of there. And there are probably still people in the loading room."

"That's true, but we're going to have to take that risk. Or are you saying the captain, you and me aren't enough to handle a bunch of pirates that probably got knocked about real hard by the explosion?"

"If you put it like that how can I say no?" Kane was enough of an adult to see when he had been outmaneuvered.

Misa returned really quickly. "The barrel is free and it is pretty big at the entrance but it looks pretty narrow towards the end."

Hyakume looked like he had just figured out a big secret. "So that's why this room isn't the size of a hangar. They're using scatter burst munition. Small rounds, comparatively speaking, but big spread and the barrel needs to accommodate that."

"I see someone's been paying attention at my lectures." Chiaki felt slightly proud.

"Everyone out." Now that a plan was set, Marika wanted to get a move on. They had already lost valuable time.

Getting through the barrel was much easier than anticipated – although they had to crawl and squeeze themselves at the end. The room was completely abandoned and sparks were flying everywhere. The wall that had to be adjacent to the exploded room looked like it was about to give in from the slightest provocation.

Grabbing a compression grenade from her girdle, Marika carefully placed it by the wall. It was a weapon that destabilized space in roughly a one and a half meter radius around it when detonated and then drew it all together, compressing it to a thousandth of the original size. Getting hit by it was a death sentence but the impact radius was small and certain materials were able to withstand the compression.

The room was depressurized because of the barrel opening but it was connected to a pressure chamber, a go-between the actual base and the rooms that didn't have pressure. Under normal circumstances a cannon like that would have three layers to it so the round could be fired while the room was pressurized. But a pirate base was anything but _normal circumstances_. A lot of it was patchwork and appropriated stolen goods.

"Remain in space suits. There is no way to tell when the NGE and SA will blow a huge hole into the outer walls and everything goes to hell." Marika gave her orders while they waited in the pressure chamber. "Don't hesitate to go through walls or heavy machinery if you need to."

"This is the first time we're attacking a place this size, but this isn't our first ride, captain." Kane sounded optimistic.

"I gotta earn my paycheck somehow, Kane." Marika smiled at her helmsman and pulled a full automatic assault rifle from her back. As far as weaponry went, the Bentenmaru now and a few years ago were completely different worlds. Raiding military vessels required firepower, both on and off the ship.

The door opened and the eight of them stepped out. Chiaki briefly looked at her captain. "Be careful." She was gone before Marika could return the advice.

There were three hallways leading away from just beyond the pressure chamber. One straight ahead, one to the left and right – the right one being collapsed by the explosion and shutters having cut off the depressurized path. _Blowing through the door wouldn't have done us any good._

"All right, we got work to do!"

=== Shin Mouretsu Pirates ===

"What a waste." Marika stepped over the body of a young and good looking pirate. "None of them can aim and yet they just refused to surrender." Behind her were the mangled remains of three pirates that had been caught in a compression grenade they had thrown – and Marika had kicked right back to them. "Coorie, terminal."

"On it."

"Misa, door."

"Already checking."

"Luca, the other terminal."

"Yes, yes."

Marika opened a com channel to the other party. Fifteen minutes had elapsed since they arrived in the base proper and for that time they had maintained radio silence. "Chiaki, come in."

"Captain? What is it?" Chiaki sounded moderately surprised.

"What is your situation over there?"

"About fifty dead, not a scratch on us so far. I think they don't get enough experience with actual firefights out here." There was the sound of Chiaki's beam rifle being fired and causing an explosion, followed by several men screaming. "We're firing to kill as ordered, but I ordered Kane to not pursue anyone that disarms and runs away."

"Good call."

"What about your side?"

"We found one of the control rooms, although it looks like it is just a backup one. Luca and Coorie are working the terminals. Anything you learned about the situation outside?"

"The NGE is duking it out with the pirates. And from what we heard the SA is right there in the middle of it, fighting the NGE as well. It looks like only a matter of time until the first NGE and SA vessels start boarding."

"Just as planned then."

"Any changes to the plan?"

"None."

"Stay safe, captain. Chiaki out."

 _Fifty dead and she tells me to stay safe. I could probably let Misa go with Chiaki and have Kane join our group. Too late to worry about it now._ "Coorie?"

"No dice. I can't access life support and the power grid from here."

"What about communication?"

"Should I shut it down?"

"No. We're going to have a live broadcast."

"All right. It looks like you can reach the entire base from here." Coorie abused the terminal for a few seconds and then a string of thirteen numbers showed up on the screen – the frequency for the base wide broadcast. "Just link into the frequency and you're good to go." _I wanna go back to the Bentenmaru. Walking around like this, out in the open and with people shooting other people is not my job._

Changing the frequency of her communicator, Marika took a deep breath and then used her deepest voice, which did not sound like her at all. "This is Stellar Alliance Military vice-admiral Stratos Likon! Attention all Stellar Alliance personnel. Through authorization code SA82-A40SC20 I hereby permit the use of gravity bombs for interpersonal combat to suppress the pirates and the unlawful boarding parties from the New Galactic Empire." Crossing her fingers for Coorie to see, the frequency went dead right after.

Coorie just looked curious. "Are they really gonna fall for that? There's no such authorization code, right?"

"'Course not. But the soldiers have got to be spread out all over. Are they gonna check if this was a legitimate message? Probably not. Open a new channel. Misa, you're up."

"Me?" Misa had been guarding the door, although nobody was coming.

"I can't make announcements for both sides." Marika nodded at Coorie, who gave Misa the next string of numbers, the next frequency. The captain briefly explained to Misa what she had to say and then took over her guard position.

"To all New Galactic Empire units – permission of ionization weaponry is hereby granted in response to deployment of outlawed weaponry by the Stellar Alliance. Personal authorization by Admiral Setsuna Seief, NGE ID Quattro Delta Cerberus Valkyrie." And again the frequency went dead.

"What exactly is the point of making both of them confused about what outlawed weapons they get to use?" Misa didn't fully understand.

"Multiple purposes. One, it makes them doubt their chain of command. Two, it thins out their ranks without us having to get our hands any dirtier than necessary. Three, a lot of structural damage. Gravity and Ionization weaponry is among the top three of leaving behind a ton of damage. And finally, four, it depletes their stock of those weapons while there are still tons of pirates and soldiers around."

"You have become a really devious woman, captain."

"You mean I've become a great pirate. Isn't that right?"

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"I understand you like to flirt with the nurse, captain, but what are we gonna do now? More broadcasts?"

"Nope. Luca, how are things?"

"Almost done." Luca was no wizard with computers, not like Coorie, but she knew her way around a terminal better than most and she was a capable assistant to Coorie. Where she excelled was maps. And a map was exactly what she had obtained. "Should I send it to everyone via our private channel?"

"Go ahead."

Misa received an encrypted package and opened it by using her private access code. The display inside her helmet now had a map overlay that she could zoom in and out of, as well as rotate, by tapping her helmet accordingly. "The base is a lot smaller than expected." Zooming all the way out, Misa tried to guess how big exactly it was but gave up when she couldn't figure out an actual scale. "Luca, is the map complete?"

"There exist large caves within the planet that are accessible but have no atmosphere. The base itself is no bigger than a village of about five thousand people. The data we got before was badly exaggerated." Luca got up from the terminal and really wanted to go home. She was not cut out for field operations. But with a map this size and complexity, the captain needed a navigator. And no amount of wanting to go home would let her just ditch her mission.

"Make yourself seem stronger than you are to scare off potential attackers. Smart move." Marika was just a little impressed. _Well, if they couldn't handle something like that they wouldn't have been able to establish a base that survived this long. But that explains the lack of hordes of pirates to intercept us._ "Luca, we need a proper control room so Coorie can do her work."

"I'll explain as we go." Luca knew she had her captain's full trust so there was no need to explain herself.

"I'll go in front. Misa, cover our back. Just shoot at everything that moves."

A pretty long distance away were Chiaki and Kane, having arrived in a large dining hall that contained the aftermath of a battle between the NGE and SA. The room was wiped clean of everything that wasn't literally walls or floors. A little off center in the room was instead a gigantic, mangled pile of furniture, metal, plastic and even some bodies.

Kane was touching the mangled garbage in front of him. "From the looks of it, a gravity bomb went off here." Gravity bombs were a super charged version of compression bombs without the extreme compression at the end. It left targets and everything within the area mangled and sometimes victims would die very gruesome and slow deaths. A weapon that had been outlawed half a century ago, a prohibition that the Stellar Alliance lifted to deal with the NGE.

Having received the map a few minutes prior, Chiaki left the navigating to Kane – as a helmsman he was somewhat reliable in that regard. "At least now we know where we are going." Chiaki looked at the energy levels of her rifle and glanced around. _Nothing here we can make use of. But we should be pretty deep into the base. That the NGE and SA are already here is somewhat inconvenient. We did lose time when the explosive entry didn't go as planned, but still… they must be desperate to take this base._

"This way." Kane led them through one of the four exits and down a dimly lit hallway. "The generator room is not too far from here. We're lucky that we headed this way to begin with."

"A pirate needs a lot of guts, a good head on their shoulders and just a bit of luck." Chiaki quoted Marika and felt proud somehow, even though it was not her own creation.

"For all I care we could reach the generator without encountering anyone else. This really isn't my kinda thing." San-Daime was not the type that liked to be in the middle of anywhere that had people shooting at each other. It was too different from ship to ship combat aboard the Bentenmaru. "At least-"

"Shh." Kane raised his left hand and immediately made a fist. All three behind him immediately took cover on the side of the hallway while Kane remained standing. And not a moment too early. Shots started flying moments after, right pas the end of the hallway, from both sides. Approaching the edge, Kane looked around the corner for just a quarter of a second, jumped to the other side of the hallway and repeated the almost superhuman feat before he retreated. "NGE and SA pinned each other down. They probably saw me, but didn't act. Most likely couldn't tell which side I belong to. We're going around them."

Chiaki didn't have any objections to that. But the way around proved to be fairly long and full of pirates and soldiers as well. There was not a single safe route. "We could go through one of them, but that would no doubt attract a ton of attention." Kane wanted to avoid pointlessly increasing the death toll. At least when it came to those killed by the Bentenmaru crew.

Chiaki had been looking over the map in exhaustive detail while they had sneaked around. "We go over them." Chiaki gestured to Kane. "The map doesn't show it, but there have to be air ducts in a base this big. See the room two hallways down? The one that's larger than the others around it."

"What about it?"

"There are several of these rooms all across the base, all the same size. They're most likely all connected to each other. Filtration rooms, most likely. Just a guess for now."

"It's worth checking out."

The group of four headed back the way they came and took a small detour, briefly breaking into a military jog as they encountered Stellar Alliance soldiers. _Marika was right on the money with us pretending to be SA personnel. They did not even bat an eye at us._

Heading into the target room, they found that it was far from being a filtration room – it was a power station. The walls were covered in cables thick enough to match Kane's upper arms and there was a singular massive power turbine in the center, slowly turning and regulating and redistributing power that came from the generator. "Close." Chiaki said that out loud without thinking.

Kane didn't waste any time and checked the air ducts. "They're free. I was worried they'd have put cables through there, but we're in luck."

"Hey, Chiaki." Surprisingly, San-Daime was talking directly to Chiaki. "I could rig this thing to overload and blow the entire sections grid if you give me a few minutes."

"There's no point. We're going to blow up the generator and one of the captain's goals is to fry the power grid. I also don't want their shoddy tech to malfunction and blow us all up." Chiaki didn't mince her words, not with Marika and not with anyone else. "We don't have _a few minutes_ to just stay here. We're sitting on a grenade with no real way out should the NGE or the pirates show up."

"Okay, okay, I didn't need a long explanation. You know I listen to you, right?"

"I'm just tense. This is not our average mission." Chiaki felt bad for snapping at San-Daime.

"We're leaving." Kane had somewhat taken over control. Chiaki was very capable but she also let herself sometimes get sidetracked. "Chiaki, you're the most nimble out of the four of us. Go in front."

Most girls would have thought _They are going to stare at my ass_ in this situation but the thought didn't even occur to Chiaki. They were crew members first and men second. Not to mention that getting caught staring at the captain's girlfriend would not go over well. Crawling through the air duct, Chiaki realized that they would be sitting ducks if someone noticed them. But with all the noise that was going on inside the base, that would hopefully not be a problem.

A minute. Then two. Then five. The shaft seemed to be never ending. Elbows and knees were hurting across all four members by the time they saw the light at the end of the tunnel. According to the map they were past the numerous blockade points where SA and NGE were holding each other in check.

Landing in a similar turbine room, with even more cables in it that now also covered all of the floor, Chiaki had to stretch to get her joints to relax. "Makes you feel like we're spies, not pirates."

"I'm getting too old for this..." San-Daime sat down for a moment.

"We're a few minutes out from the generator, based on the map." Kane was the last to crawl out of the air duct and felt like his head was about to fall off. _I'm going to ask the captain for a raise after all of this. And I think we all deserve like a week paid vacation._ "Let's take sixty seconds and then we go. I'll take a look at the hallway."

"Kane." Chiaki held him back. She had come a long way since he towered over her – she was almost his height now. "If we have to go through a bunch of people, that's that. We don't have time for any more-" The lights went out and the turbine slowly ground to a halt. "-detours." _That was fast, Marika_.

In a completely different location, Marika was hunching over a terminal now. "That was fast."

"I'd like to take credit for that, but that wasn't actually me." Coorie stared at the dead terminal and dove down beneath it. "Auxiliary power is still on or we'd be sitting in total darkness instead of red lights. Misa, can you get me one of the power cables from the wall? It'll be a hack job but aux power alone isn't gonna get this thing running."

Marika stepped back and immediately went into analytic mode. _Did the pirates cut the power? They might think it gives them an advantage in the dark. But against so many invading soldiers that is not going to matter. Then did the NGE or SA cut power? They'd each be as affected by it as the other side. Was it some sort of accident? Chiaki would contact me after they set the bomb at the generator._ "Chiaki, report."

"Captain?"

"Was the generator damaged? It looks like the base lost primary power."

"That wasn't you who shut off the power?"

"We were about to. Someone else must have gotten there first."

"We're close to the generator. If it blew up, we'd be toast. Maybe it was just shut down, so-" The red lights went out while Chiaki was talking, drowning everyone in complete darkness for a moment. Instead of turning on her headlight, Chiaki took cover, the other three with her doing the same. _Auxiliary power went out too? Then-_ Chiaki slowly started floating off the ground. "Gravity just went out."

"Same here." Marika managed to keep herself grounded with magnetic boots. "Coorie, did you do that?"

"Nope. But if Aux power is out too, someone is doing that on purpose. That usually runs off batteries and such, there is no way to just base wide cut that without deliberately turning it off. And because it went off right after primary, that has to be intentional."

"You heard her. Looks like we're going to be operating in the dark from here on." Marika watched Coorie switch on her helmet light and so did Misa and Luca. "Avoid taking off your helmets to listen for hostiles. We got no idea if they aren't going to cut life support next."

"Wasn't the plan to do that from our side?"

"Make the plan, follow the plan, watch the plan go awry, forget the parts of the plan that don't work anymore. Coorie did look at the generator from the terminal. It's an old fission splicer that still uses radioactive materials."

"That is going to make whatever will be left of this base completely uninhabitable because of radiation."

"I don't like the idea of basically setting off a nuclear bomb either, but it does suit our purpose here."

"The original plan did account for killing everyone that was still on the base when the bomb went up." Chiaki had just a little less scruple when it came to killing soldiers and pirates that just did whatever they wanted.

"I didn't like that either, but we don't have much of a choice. Even if the base is smaller than expected, we can't let anyone have it."

"I know."

"Be careful. Everyone else is also in the dark and that makes them twitchy."

"You be careful too. We only have one of each of you."

"You hear that, Misa, Coorie, Luca? Chiaki-chan is worried-"

"Don't call me Chiaki-chan!" Chiaki shut down her channel and glared in the general direction of Kane and the others who pretended to not even be there.

"Captain, I think it is best to not agitate Chiaki during a mission." Misa was looking at her captain with a smile. She knew full and well that this would never – ever – stop. For the rest of their lives, Marika would call her Chiaki-chan and Chiaki would get upset over it.

"I can't help it. I love her too much to not tease her a little." Marika was lying and Misa knew it.

 _She did this to ease the tension that everyone felt over the lights going out. Most people would really freak out and get intensely worried about what was gonna happen next all the time in a situation like this. But now we're all kinda taken out of it by Chiaki's reaction. I know that was deliberate, captain. But you shouldn't use Chiaki like that. She really **does** hate it. Although it is quite cute to see her angry like that_, Misa thought and felt better already. "So far we haven't really had any big setbacks. I hope it stays that way."

"The plan was pretty flexible to start with. Go in, cause chaos, set up a bomb, escape and blow it all to pieces. There isn't much that can stop any of that from happening."

"I'm a little concerned about the getting out part now that the power is out."

"It will be a little more trouble than before, but nothing we can handle." Marika noticed the light on Coorie's terminal come on. "Perfect timing."

"Misa, can you come down here? You gotta hold this cable chaos in place so the power doesn't go out again. This is like an analog engineering horror story come alive." Coorie was holding out below the terminal until Misa took over for her. "I do my own maintenance on my stuff on board the ship but I never understood how messy a foreign system could be."

Standing behind Coorie, Marika watched her access the main frame, which was still running. "How come the mainframe is even still online?"

"That kinda stuff usually has its own power source and you can't shut it off without specialized access. The shutdown command came from… looks like some kind of central command center. My best guess is that they're trying to make it as hard as possible for the soldiers to take the base." Abusing the keyboard for a few seconds, Coorie got something else to turn up on the screen. "Yeah, thought so. The lack of power is making it impossible to use the main harbor so they're trying to stop any reinforcements from coming in. There is no way to dock a ship and unload troops, they'd have to deploy in spacesuits and these kinda ships are not made for that. Probably."

"What's the situation with the generator?"

"One sec." Clicking noises filled the room, only interrupted by a groan from Misa, who was still beneath the terminal. "It's still running. An old thing like that can't be shut off that easily, not without leaking radiation everywhere, anyway."

"So no issue on Chiaki's end. With the harbor down we'll have to take our backup plan to get out of here."

"Captain, about that-" Coorie hit up the map that Luca had previously put together – the system itself hadn't had a complete map until she did – and pointed at a specific part of it. "This yellow section is right around where we came in. The red room is the one we blew up."

"And the red room next to is the one with the cannon. Red means no pressure, so something happened."

"We probably can't get out that way. It shows a warning that the entire section has been sealed off."

"Backup of the backup then. Luca."

"Yes?"

"You said there are caves, right. Do any of them go up to the surface?" Marika didn't forget such things.

"A number of them do."

Marika paused for a moment. "Coorie, now that I think about it, why are we in zero gravity? This is a dwarf planet, right? Shouldn't it have at least zero point two G or something?"

"Even if you ask me that..." Coorie was a tech wiz, not omniscient.

"This planet was most likely the subject of strip mining to the point of making it into a shell." Luca offered surprising insight. "The large caves might be the remnants of the mining."

"That'd have to be a ton of mining. I mean, we're talking about taking away a planet's gravity." Coorie was not too convinced.

"We can theorize about that after we go through the mines. Worst case scenario we'll take a bit of a scenic route." Marika put her hand down on the terminal, more closely looking over Coorie's shoulder. "Can you turn off life support from here? Or simply vent the atmosphere?"

"The first needs the central terminal, I know that now, and the latter is not something this base can do. But-" Coorie pulled up another system. "They forgot to safeguard the actual composition of breathable air and the regulation system. I can raise the oxygen levels really high or set them really low."

"The purer oxygen is, the more flammable it is. We want this place to become space dust. But we don't want the air to start burning before we're actually out of here. Set it really low. They'll pick up on the life support system going haywire eventually, but by then a lot of them will be down for the count." Marika considered both options and decided that only one was really viable. _I'm glad we didn't have to fight that much yet. I'd like to keep it that way. We're just four people, two of which are used to shooting things. If we get ambushed or surrounded, things will get really hairy._ "Luca, where do we go to access the caves?"

"It would be best to meet up with Chiaki's team and proceed from there instead of entering from different spots."

"Can I let go of this damn cable now?" Misa was really getting tired of holding up a cable as thick as her arms.

"Just let me adjust this slider here and lock the system so nobody can change it back and… done. You can power off now." Coorie watched the screen go dark immediately and Misa slowly float out from under the terminal. "Thanks."

"You're working your medic too hard, captain."

"The Bentenmaru medic is tougher than space nails." Marika smirked about it. _I'll give her some of that really old scotch that we grabbed a while back. The one person you don't want grumpy on a ship is the medic. Oh, and the cook I guess._ "I'm sure the captain has appropriate compensation in mind, though." Her smirk continued. "Let's make our exit. It's time to meet up with Chiaki."

Said girl was just stepping over half a corpse that was still in the process of very slowly disintegrating. A large squad of SA soldiers and pirates had been engaged in a fight when NGE soldiers stormed in and used ionizing blast grenades. Dreadful weapons that caused the bonds between molecules of all organic matter in the vicinity to come apart, making the victim disintegrate. The NGE's answer to the gravity bombs.

Using only minimal lighting to move ahead, Chiaki and Kane were alone – the other two having taken cover in the dark, behind a number of metal crates. Raising her left hand, pointing ahead with just her index and middle finger, Chiaki watched Kane grab hold of a metal bar and adjust his course. She went around the big object that was blocking their line of sight – the generator.

They had made it there in one piece, but they had followed a small group of NGE soldiers there, which meant they had to take them out first. Operating in near darkness, the lights of the NGE soldiers were providing somewhat of a beacon.

Chiaki couldn't see Kane in the distance, but she could see the soldiers just fine. There were six of them. They were too close to throw a compression grenade at them, it would damage the generator and they couldn't have that. They needed that thing to work so it could properly explode.

Taking aim, Chiaki waited for exactly fifteen seconds before she opened fire. There was no distinct meaning to the number fifteen. It was merely that she deemed that enough time for Kane to aim and take position. He would not open fire until she did because she was the one in charge of their operation. She fired twelve shots in rapid succession – killing two of the six and wounding the other four, who dropped dead seconds later from high density blasts that came from the other direction. A coordinated ambush that proved to be instantly lethal.

"Kane, do you see any others?"

A small delay before an answer came quietly over coms. "No."

"Hyakume, San-Daime, you are up." Chiaki's order was immediately followed by deployment from the two tech specialists. And not ten seconds later, Chiaki received a transmission. "Captain?"

"We are done with our side. Oxygen levels across the base are going to drop to almost nothing really quickly now. People are going to start choking soon." Marika didn't sound enthusiastic about it. Deep down she was hoping people would just abandon base and flee once they realized life support was failing. That had been the goal behind causing chaos, some initial death toll and then the power and life support going out. Life support ran on its own, self-contained power grid that was direct analog access only, but the actual life support could be tampered with remotely, including turning it off. But turning off the lights and cutting oxygen would no doubt make everyone get out. Whoever was obsessed enough with the base to stay would go up in a big boom and Marika was okay with that. These people knew what they had signed up for. "We're on our way to the generator now."

"Here? Why?" Chiaki didn't understand but she was able to make her own assumptions. "So the first and second plan of getting out are not going to work?"

"We're going into the caves and from there get to the surface. The base won't survive the explosion but the planet will. We'll have the Bentenmaru pick us up on the other side. Just a bit of a scenic route through the entrails of a dwarf planet!"

"I sure hope you're not thinking of counting that as a vacation."

"Oh, that is a great idea!"

"Captain."

"Just kidding!" There was a pause. "Misa, based on the contracts, can I make that count as a paid vacation?"

"Captain, we can hear you!" Hyakume snorted a little. No matter how stressful a situation got, their captain always managed to crack them up a little, to make the tension disappear.

"There were a lot of hostiles in the area just out of the generator room when we first got here. We had to go around and crawl through an air duct. I can explain where-"

"An air duct?! Chiaki, did you go in front?"

"Huh? Well, I did. I am the most agile out of the four-"

" **Kane**!"

Kane physically flinched and squatted down, slowly rotating on the spot. "What is it, captain?"

"This was your idea wasn't it! You all got to stare at Chiaki's ass in there!"

"No, no, no, it was dark and-"

"Do you know how angry she gets when she catches me staring at her ass?!"

"Captain, this is probably not the best conversation to have on the open channel-"

"Damn you Kane… next time I am making Misa go with you!"

"I refuse. I don't want that notorious flirt looking at my ass." Misa joined the conversation.

"Pervert." Coorie chimed in as well.

"Not just the captain's girlfriend, she also used to be your student." Luca took out the big guns. "Is that how you look at Sasha as well? Don't come near her again."

" **Everyone shut up**!" Chiaki's face was scarlet red. "Nobody stared at my ass! Hyakume was behind me and he had to keep his head down the entire time!"

"Hyakume, you-!" Marika's voice just cut out in the middle of it. That made all four of those in the generator room tense up. Fifteen seconds passed and Marika's voice didn't come back on.

"Continue working." Chiaki kept her worrying under control while she was out in the field. Marika was an experience pirate, a good shot and most of all, the person she trusted the most. And sure enough, two minutes after the cut off, her voice returned.

"Resistance from suited soldiers. Everyone is fine." Marika quickly eased their minds. "The fighting seems to be largely over for the time being. They are most likely trying to get life support to normalize to continue their seizing of the base. It'll be too late then. We should be close now. Marika out."

"You heard her." Chiaki turned to the two technicians. "Finish up before she gets here so we can get out of here."

"This kind of work makes me feel more like a terrorist and less like a pirate." San-Daime had his grievances with the mission, but nothing that impeded his work.

"Less complaining, more working!" Chiaki waved over Kane. "You **didn't** look at my ass, did you?"

"Can't we drop this already?" Kane was looking rather uncomfortable with that accusation. "You know the captain likes to joke about this. She's even made almost this exact same joke with Misa instead of me before."

"Just making sure." Chiaki turned around and made sure that she remained on eye level with Kane before she floated away. "Cover the other entrance. I don't want any surprises just before the captain gets here."

"Our two ladies can be quite a handful." Hyakume joked to San-Daime.

"Two? Are you saying Luca, Misa and Coorie can't be a handful?"

"They're not the ones giving orders."

"Clearly you never burned your hand on an overheating containment channeler and had Misa patch you up." San-Daime shivered. "The captain and her vice are something all right, but Misa is something **else**."

"Who are you telling… hm? SD, you brought the fuse circuit, right?" _Please do not let him say 'What? I gave that to you' or something like that. Chiaki will take off my head._

"Pretty sure that was in your package." Hyakume started to sweat profusely for moment while SD looked through his stuff. "Oh, my bad, I did rearrange the packages before we left. Here."

With everything going as smoothly as it could considering the mess they had thrown themselves into, Marika was growing suspicious of it all. It never went **that** well, at least not for pirates. Was lady luck just really shining hard on her because getting rid of this base was three birds with one stone? Or was something or someone deliberately letting things go as planned? "Keep your guard up. My gut is telling me that we'll run into something strange before we get out of here."

Misa was not surprised by this at all. Things had been going rather smoothly, which was unusual. In a big mission like this, there were supposed to be a lot of close calls. A healthy dose of paranoia and suspicion went a long way to keep a pirate alive after all. "How bad is it? Your gut feeling."

"Not as bad as the time we walked right into an ambush by the Haftalin syndicate. Half, maybe." Marika raised her hand and the group stopped, using the wall to stop themselves. Peering ahead in the dark, Marika turned on her lights. _Suffocated pirates_. It wasn't a pretty sight, but nothing that bothered her too much. "Advance."

Reaching the reactor room was easy now. All the soldiers and pirates were either suffocating or hurrying to fix the life support system. Nobody bothered to even think about the generator because the power grid was down.

There was one thing that told everyone they shouldn't relax yet – Marika did not fly across the room to tease or annoy Chiaki. Seeing that after a mission was the official _you can relax now_ sign that Chiaki had so vehemently protested in vain. "Is the bomb ready?"

"Fifteen minutes timer. That should be plenty of time to get out of the blast radius, especially in zero-G." SD was confident about this.

"Misa, Kane, you two have the rear. Chiaki, you're covering the front with me. Everyone else in-between, two by two. Don't get distracted. Once the clock ticks, there's no hold ups, for nothing, short of one of us getting shot." Marika checked the reserve on her rifle. _I hope there's not gonna be a huge fire fight waiting for us in those caves._ "San-Daime, give me the switch."

Slowly floating forward, SD handed over the button that would, in fifteen minutes, reduce Frontier Fortress 10 to nothing but radioactive space dust. "Just press the red button and the timer will go. It's got about a thousand meters subspace range."

Marika kept the switch secure in her left hand, with the danger cap still protecting the actual button so she wouldn't press it by accident. "All right. You lot, we're getting out of here now."

"Well, well, I was wondering who it was that was causing so much trouble. I hardly recognized your voice during that broadcast, Captain Kato."

Before most of the crew could react, Kane and Chiaki pushed Luca, Coorie and Hyakume out of the way and aimed their guns at the source of a voice **they** definitely recognized. Behind them, clad in a somewhat form fitting space suit, was a silver haired woman with blue lipstick and slanted eyes. Nobody said a word until Marika got to the front, staring at the unexpected encounter. "Quartz… Christie?!"

=== Until the Next Voyage ===


End file.
